























/ 




THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


NOVELS BY BERTA RUCK 

His Official Fiancee 

The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre 

The Boy with Wings 

In Another Girl’s Shoes 

The Girls at His Billet 

Miss Million’s Maid 

The Three of Hearts 

The Years for Rachel 

A Land-Girl’s Love Story 

The Disturbing Charm 

Sweethearts Unmet 

The Bridge of Kisses 

Sweet Stranger 

The Arrant Rover 

The Wrong Mr. Right 



I DECIDED TO BURST FORTH INTO COLOURS, AND, FOR MY GAY 
EVENING, TO CHOOSE A GAY DRESS 


Page 203 






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- 























THE WRONG 
MR. RIGHT 

A NOVEL 

BY 

BERTA RUCK 

FRONTISPIECE BY 

E. C. CASWELL 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1922 


PUBLISHED IN THE U. S. A. 1922 
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 

■J.T- 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 

e <2£umn & JSobrn Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 


f, z ' ^5 2 z A 


DEDICATION 

“Cheer up, Girls ! He is getting 
on his boots ! ” 

(E. V. Lucas’s song “Mr. Right’* in 
“Over Bemerton’s”) 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I 

A “Before-the-War” Bogy 



PAGBT 

11 

II 

About Stockings — and a Young Man 

22 

III 

Business Girls 

. 


34 

IV 

“When First We Practise to 

De- 



CEIVE , 9 



49 

V 

An Unexpected Protest 

. 


67 

VI 

A Visitor — and an Errand 

. 


75 

VII 

A Compliment — and a Catastrophe 

84 

VIII 

Fresh Complications . 

. 


100 

IX 

A False Position . 

. 


109 

X 

A New Factor in the Affair ! 

. 


124 

XI 

About Pearls — and Tears . 

. 


134 

XII 

A Clash of Wills 

. 


146 

XIII 

Two Kinds of Girls . 



159 

XIV 

The Wolf at the Door 

. 


175 

XV 

A Woman’s Privilege . 

. 


182 

XVI 

A Lady of Means — and Moods 

. 


189 

XVII 

The House-warming 

. 


197 

XVIII 

The Tenth Guest 

. 


210 

XIX 

The Fiances .... 

. 


226 

XX 

An ‘ ‘ Engagement of Sorts ’ ’ 

. 


241 


7 


CHAPTER 

CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XXI 

The Shadowy Third . 

. 252 

XXII 

One Spinster’s View of It 

. 258 

XXIII 

“Akin to Love” . 

. . 264 

XXIV 

Love at Last .... 

. . 275 

XXV 

A Cry from the Heart 

. 288 

XXVI 

A Woman’s Duel . 

. 295 

XXVII 

Sailing Orders 

. . 306 


8 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 








THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

CHAPTER I 


a “before-the-war” bogy 

“ wait until Mr* Right comes 

Jf along ” 

Oh, that pre-War phrase ! How it ex- 
asperated me when I was twenty-one! 

“Wait” — yes, that was the fascinating occu- 
pation offered to all unmarried girls who, like 
me, did not actually have to work. 

And for “Mr. Right !” — I imagine that when 
the name was first invented (no doubt on some 
extra wet evening in the Ark, when the Shems 
got tired of playing Animal Grab with the 
Hams and began telling fairy-tales instead) it 
summed up the ideal lover of All-Romance. 
But since then it has been taken too often in 
vain. It has been spoilt for lovers ; ruined by 
11 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
match-makers and the matter-of-fact. It has 
come to mean — a bogy and a bore. 

To me, Morwenna Beaugard, it came to mean 
Georgie Settle, the son of the Rector in the 
next village from the one in which I had been 
brought up. In that quiet country rectory my 
great-uncle and guardian arranged to put me 
— as a paying guest — when my aunt, with whom 
I’d lived, died. 

She had left me two hundred a year of my 
own, which was a good deal — in those days! 
Quite enough for me to be very comfortable on, 
said my guardian, until I married. 

I told him I didn’t mean to marry. I didn’t 
like men. At that time I had met very few; 
my brother Jim — who was of the type that can 
only be described as 4 ‘ The Sultan of the Hearth- 
rug” and this Georgie Settle, who laid down 
the law as only a pre-War Oxford undergradu- 
ate could do. No; men were too domineering, 
and I didn’t want to marry any. Then out it 
had come, the time-honoured dictum. 

“You wait until Mr. Right asks you!” And 
12 


A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY 


my guardian had made some arch, old-gentle- 
manly joke about “ ‘Settle’ — ing down.” 

It was the last straw ! 

It made up my mind for me. . . . 

I won’t go into the long and exhausting ar- 
guments that preceded my coming up to earn 
my living in town. They sound too antedilu- 
vian now, in the days when every girl treats 
as a matter of course what was to me a revo- 
lution ! 

I took my business training at Mrs. Herrick- 
Henderson’s, in the City, determined to get it 
over, obtain a post, and be well in the way of 
my independent life in London before my 
brother came home on leave from the East. 

Please realise, I was not naturally an “in- 
dependent” young woman, nor severe, nor prac- 
tical! It was a grief to me that I looked, at 
twenty-two, as if I were seventeen. But I could 
buckle to. I did. I got through my course in 
a way that Mrs. Herrick-Henderson said was 
“highly creditable” when she told me she con- 
sidered me sufficiently advanced and proficient 
to send out to work as a clerk. 

13 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

It was she who gave me the address at which 
I had to apply; I looked upon it as a passport 
io my own independence and self-respect, and 
— to my escape from “Mr. Right!” 

The passport read: 

Mr. ALLEN, 

Mining and Engineering Encyclopaedia. 

Frith Chambers, 

Palace Road, 

Westminster. 

( Apply between 2 and 4 .) 

The Palace Road was a distinct change from 
Leadenhall Street and the business college. 

After that pandemonium of the City, with its 
crowds of bare-headed Stock Exchange clerks, 
and its tangle of motor- ’buses, it felt as quiet 
as a country rectory itself, being an old-fash- 
ioned street standing back from the Embank- 
ment. 

Frith Chambers was the first floor of an old- 
fashioned Georgian house, without any lift, but 
just a quaint wooden staircase, with wonder- 
fully carved banisters, and shallow stairs, that 
14 


A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY 
must have been trodden by powdered ladies and 
gentlemen with cherry-coloured satin knee- 
breeches. At the top of the first flight there 
was a beautifully moulded door, with a little 
brass plate, “Mr. Allen/’ under the circular 
brass knocker. 

Feeling that the whole of my future depended 
on Mr. Allen’s reception of me, I knocked. 

“Come in!” called a masculine voice. 

I found myself in a long, low, white-panelled 
room, corniced and beautifully moulded like 
the door, and only furnished with book-shelves, 
two arm-chairs, one revolving chair, and a big 
roll-top desk. 

A man, seeming small and very dark against 
the bright light from the window, was sitting 
at the desk, his head bent over some slips of 
paper. 

He crumpled one up, and tossed it into a 
roomy waste-paper basket as he looked up. 

Then he threw the end of a cigar after the 
crumpled paper, and stood up and looked at me. 

As the light fell upon him, I saw that he was 
15 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


a little old gentleman, with hair as white as 
Great-uncle Joseph’s, my guardian’s. 

There was rather less of a self-satisfied ex- 
pression on his shrewd, wrinkled old face as he 
looked at me in a surprised sort of way. I 
rather liked his look, and the kindly voice in 
which he said : 

“What can I do for you?” 

“I have been sent to you,” I explained, put- 
ting on as experienced and business-like a voice 
as I possibly could, “by Mrs. Herrick-Hender- 
son, of Leadenhall Street.” 

Looking hard at me, he repeated, “Mrs. Her- 
rick-Henderson?” as if he had never heard of 
such a person. 

Rather abashed, I explained : 

“I think you applied to her for some one to 
work for you?” 

Light seemed to dawn on him. 

“Oh — ah — another clerk!” Then he added, 
half as if he were talking to himself: “Ah, yes 
— but I didn’t mean — I am afraid this won’t do 
at all. No, no, not at all!” 

I looked at him, horrified. 

16 


A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY 

What was there about me that should make 
him make up his mind at the first glance like 
this ? 

I had taken ages to dress and to do my hair ! 
I know I looked very neat — “a neat appear- 
ance’ ’ was always being rubbed into us at the 
business college, particularly into those girls 
who were fond of blossoming into imitation 
aigrettes in their hats, and pearl necklaces, and 
coral drop-earrings, and much-too-low necks. 

There were none of those things about me., 
My very “good” black costume (mourning for 
Aunt Susan) fitted me perfectly. My black vel- 
vet hat was small, and “lady-like,” and becom- 
ing. 

The only drawback was that all-black does 
make me look rather absurdly pink-and-white, 
like a baby; perhaps the old gentleman thought 
I was quite young — too young ? 

Yes, that would seem to be it, from the ques- 
tion that he put next. 

“I don’t suppose you have ever been out to 
business before, have you? No, quite so! I 

thought not. You know, Miss ” 

17 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

He paused here for my name, which I gave 
him. 

“You know, Miss Beaugard,” he went on, 
“that business life is very different from what 
most of you young ladies imagine it to be. And 
though you may think that coming here would 
not be like going to an office in the City, I assure 
you that it is just as important that the young 
ladies who work for me should be business-like. 
It is of no use, for instance, my saying that the 
hours are from half-past nine to five, and then 
having you turn up at a quarter to ten. A quar- 
ter to ten is not good enough ! f ’ 

He spoke as if I had contradicted him, and 
said it was ! 

“Not good enough!” he repeated. “Nor is 
it good enough , 9 9 he went on, ‘ 4 to have my tele- 
phone number engaged at frequent intervals 
during the day, and other calls held up because 
the line is blocked by friends of one of my 
clerks, who ring her up at all hours of the day. 
I can’t have that kind of thing.” 

“Of course not,” I murmured, wondering 
why he should find it necessary to impress this 
18 


A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY 

upon me. “I shouldn’t allow any one to ring 
me up on the telephone in business hours — I 
shouldn’t dream of it!” 

“ Another thing,” added the old gentleman, 
looking at me — ‘ ‘ afternoons off ! Now, the only 
afternoon off which I give them here is on Sat- 
urdays. No use coming to me at other times 
and saying you want to go to a matinee, or an 
afternoon concert, or out shopping with an 
aunt. I disapprove of ‘ aunts’ in business 
hours. Aunts, or whatever you choose to call 
them, are like matinees, for Saturdays only.” 

“Of course,” I murmured. 

“So you see, Miss Beaugard,” he went on 
conclusively, “I am afraid this post would not 
be at all the kind of thing for a young lady 
like you.” 

Why not? I gazed at him in startled de- 
spair. Why should he think I wanted a post 
where they didn’t require people to be business- 
like? 

“I have a very good recommendation,” I fal- 
tered. “Won’t you at least look at it?” And 
19 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

I handed him the testimonial which I had 
brought with me. 

He took it, and glanced at it, while I felt my 
heart beating furiously. 

This was my first application for a situation. 
I knew some girls applied half a dozen times be- 
fore they were taken on; but I had a queer, 
agonised feeling that if I did not get this post 
I should get nothing! I should have to say 
good-bye to my chances of independence in Lon- 
don! 

In spite of my * ‘own money,’ ’ I should be so 
discouraged that I should find myself giving 
way, inch by inch, to Great-uncle Joseph and 
to Jim — especially Jim — when he came home 
and found that I hadn’t been able to “pull off” 
’the career which I had proudly mapped out for 
myself. 

I found myself murmuring, almost aloud : 

“The rectory — one of themselves — paying 
guest — delighted to have you — occupation — 
sewing for a bazaar — waiting for Mr. 
Right ” 

Must I — must I go back to that? 

20 


A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY 


“Oh, won’t you give me a trial?” I almost 
gasped, as the old gentleman folded up the tes- 
timonial and handed it to me again. 

I clutched it wildly, as I repeated : 

“Couldn’t you give me a trial for a week or 
so to see how I get on? I promise you that I 
will not be unbusiness-like. Mrs. Herrick-Hen- 
derson once said I was the most reliable pupil 
in the class. Please give me, at least, a 
chance ! ’ ’ 

And I felt as if my heart would stop beating 
until the old gentleman should take his search- 
ing glance off my agitated face and should an- 
swer my appeal. ... I felt so desperately sure 
that it was this or nothing! It was his job — 
or “Mr. Right.” 


21 


CHAPTER II 


ABOUT STOCKINGS — AND A YOUNG MAN 

I DIDN’T really feel that my heart went on 
heating normally until after I had left 
Frith Chambers again, walked along the 
Embankment, and skipped on to the front seat 
of the motor- ’bus that was to take me half the 
Way back to my club. 

But then my heart was hammering riotously, 
hot with anxiety but with delight! For Mr. 
Allen had at last, though not very enthusias- 
tically, said that he would take me on for a 
week’s trial at the work, beginning on Monday. 

Oh, how I should work, I decided ! How busi- 
ness-like I should be ! How I’d show Mr. Allen 
that matinees and extra telephone calls and 
shopping aunts and unpunctuality were things 
absolutely foreign to my nature. I should make 
him confess that of all the lady clerks he had 
22 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 

'ever had, I was the one with whom he had least 
fault to find. 

I would scarcely even ever talk to the other 
girls, whoever they might be, I determined ! 

As a matter of fact, this last would not be 
very difficult if I were no more popular there 
than I was the last part of the time among the 
girls at Mrs. Herrick-Hender son’s. 

You see, I put my foot into it badly there, 
once. Badly. ... I don’t want that ever to 
happen again. 

It was about a little Scots girl nicknamed (of 
course!) 4 ‘Mac.” 

She was the only one in my class who was 
really so hard-up that she scarcely knew how 
to pay her fees. 

And one Saturday morning I and another girl 
found her in the dressing-room with her foot 
up on a chair and a fountain-pen in her hand, 
inking the heels which showed only too pinkly 
through the holes in her black Lisle-thread 
stockings. 

When the other girl good-naturedly told her 
23 


THE WBONG MR. RIGHT 


that she “ought to be ashamed of herself for 
not spending an evening darning herself up a 
couple of pairs of stockings/ ’ she laughed, and 
explained to us how she did “spend the eve- 
ning ! ’ ’ 

Such a terribly depressing little story it was 
of the married sister with whom she lived being 
ill, and the five-months old baby who took such 
ages to “get down,” for of course he was teeth- 
ing; about the washing-up, and her brother- 
in-law’s dinner. 

“So don’t blame me,” she’d said, “if I have 
never a pair of whole stockings to my name ! ’ ’ 

She might treat it as a joke, but I thought it 
was terrible. 

No stockings? 

Now even in those days, nice stockings were 
my own pet vanity. I did think they were most 
frightfully important. Georgie Settle once told 
me he had fallen in love with me almost entirely 
because mine were the first silk ’tockies he’d 
seen worn in that part of the country. I had 
always had dozens of pairs, of all sorts and all 
colours. 


24 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 


And here was “Mac,” without an unholey 
pair to her name ! No time to mend the horrid 
holey ones she had ! ! Inking her feet ! ! ! Oh, I 
couldn’t bear it. . . . 

I’d just cashed a cheque to pay my Club bill, 
and what was the use of having an income of 
my own if it couldn ’t buy me a luxury now and 
again? Giving presents was one of the nicest 
luxuries I knew. 

No ; that’s not unselfishness, far from it. It’s 
self-indulgence, really. Some people take their 
pleasure in one way, some in another. Giving 
has always been a pure delight to me. Finding 
out what people will like, and then choosing it 
carefully and sending it off — oh, there’s no en- 
joyment like it to people who have the Give- 
passion! 

I fell to it then. On my way home I turned 
into my favourite shop and chose a dozen pairs 
of specially nice stockings, black and grey — 
for “Mac” wears a grey tweed skirt — and I 
had them sent off to her address in Shepherd’s 
Bush, which I had looked up on the college reg- 
ister; and I spent almost the whole Sunday 
25 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


buoyed up by thoughts of her putting on an im- 
maculate pair for Sunday, and of how delighted 
she would be. 

I don’t think I have ever had such a cruel 
shock as on the Monday morning, when I found 
that packet of stockings on my desk, and a Mac 
with a face as white as paper and her lips just 
a thin line across it, waiting to tell me what she 
thought of me for having had “the cheek’ ’ to 
send her parcels of ‘ 4 clothes ’ ’ ! 

Oh, it was a dreadful little scene. . . . And 
it was no use trying to explain that I’d never 
meant to hurt her. . . . 

“Did you think I’d no pr-r-r-r-r-ride ? ” asked 
Mac, “because I’d no pr-r-r-rivate mins?” 

I tried to babble something about being sure 
she would love giving things herself— 

“That’s very different!” 

“But why?” I asked. “People who give 
ought to be ready to accept! 1 should! I 
shouldn’t mind taking the things myself ” 

“Probably not!” said the little Scotswoman 
contemptuously; and then she added what was 
26 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 

evidently the bitterest taunt she could think of : 
“You see, you are from the South !” 

It was this that the other girls had got hold 
of when they sent me to Coventry, and made 
half-audible remarks before me in the dressing- 
room about “Miss Rothschild . ’ 9 A horrid time 
I had! 

That should never happen at this new place. 
I should give up my whole time to establishing 
myself in the business career which Uncle 
Joseph said it was such nonsense for me to 
think of. 

As I walked the other stretch of the way home 
through the park, where the trees were just 
touched with the first tints of autumn and where 
wine-coloured dahlias and Japanese anemones 
still blazed in the borders, I was in racing high 
spirits about the success I had just had. 
Really, I felt it was the pleasantest day of my 
life! 

And when I got to the Club, something else 
pleasant awaited me. 

A girl whom I had got to know there, called 
Mildred Perkins, and who has twice taken me 
27 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


out to tea with her very nice cousins in Ken- 
sington, ran up to me, saying she had just been 
rung up by these same cousins, who wanted to 
know whether Miss Beaugard would help them 
by stepping into the breach at a dinner-party 
they were giving that very night? 

“A girl has disappointed them at the elev- 
enth hour, and it would be so sweet of you,” 
said Mildred Perkins. ‘ ‘ Should you mind very 
much?” 

“I should love it,” I said. “I haven’t been 
to a dinner-party for a year; I haven ’t worn 
a proper evening-dress since I came to Lon- 
don. ’ ’ (For I had been going to evening classes 
half the week, and studying in my bedroom the 
other half, ever since attending the college.) 

The frock I wore was black, as usual, but as 
I was no longer in mourning, I fastened a big 
pink velvet rose at my waist, and another at 
the loop of drapery at my knee. (Yes; it was 
a ‘ 4 draped ’ ’ year. ) The roses just matched my 
necklace; poor old Aunt Susan’s pink ame- 
thysts. 

“Morwenna Beaugard, you look ripping,” 
28 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 


pronounced Mildred when she came into my 
room. “That black against your shoulders is 
like a fall of soot on a fall of snow, you pretty 
creature you ! ’ ’ 

I thought her so wonderful and Spanish ; she 
wore orange ; and glancing at our reflections to- 
gether in the glass, I did not think I looked any- 
thing, beside her. 

“Any man would !” she declared cheerfully. 
“Or almost any!” (She’d got a young man 
of her own in California.) “So I do hope the 
young man who was going to take in the girl 
who disappointed Cousin Laura will be sensible 
enough to appreciate his luck, and attractive 
enough to deserve it ! ” 

Looking back at that party of a million years 
ago ... it was all delightful. Including the 
young man who took me in instead of that girl 
who hadn’t been able to come. 

I think she missed something! For this Mr. 
Paul Lancaster who was introduced to me was 
quite as “attractive” as Mildred could have 
wished for me. 

Perhaps you who read this might not have 
29 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


found him so. Nothing is more extraordinary 
than the different eyes with which different 
human beings will look at the same person. To 
one he may seem a barber’s block; to another 
he will be all the Romeos, all the Dick Heldars, 
all the Imlays of Romance. . . . 

This young man was the big, fair, quiet, 
steady sort; with rather a slab of a face. It 
looked as if it couldn’t smile — until it did. And 
then — ah, didn’t it ! It lighted up to show a row 
of even white teeth, a bright grey twinkle in 
the eyes, and a deep, deep dimple like a little 
boy’s in one cheek. It was the kind of smile 
that makes one wish it wouldn’t be perfectly 
idiotic to beg, “Oh, do please go on looking like 
that always ! ’ ’ 

This Mr. Paul Lancaster certainly did smile 
at me a good deal during dinner! Several 
times he seemed frightfully amused at me ; not 
a bit in a horrid, patronising way, like Great- 
uncle Joseph, nor in a way that made me want 
to box his ears, like Georgie Settle, who was the 
last person who took me in to dinner, at a bor- 
ing party at that “quiet country rectory,” 
30 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 


where — thank goodness, and Mr. Allen, I shall 
never have to settle down again. 

We — that is, Mr. Lancaster and I — talked 
about everything — tennis, which he plays, and 
the theatre, and dancing, and dogs, and books 
— and fancy, he hasn’t ever read any of Miss 
Austen ! I told him that he ought to be 
ashamed of himself. 

“Ah, but you see, Miss Beaugard, I have some 
excuse. I haven’t had the time that hangs so 
heavily on your hands,” he said, looking down 
at my own hands with that ripping smile. “You 
see, I’m a hard-working engineer; not a young 
lady of leisure !” 

“Oh, but I’m not a young lady of leisure,” I 
said proudly. 

He laughed, and said, “What then?” 

“I am a business-girl,” I announced, very 
dignifiedly. 

He looked at me as if he thought I were mak- 
ing fun of him. 

‘ ‘ Indeed ! ” he said, and laughed again. 1 1 And 
do you really honour some office by turning up 
31 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
every morning regularly three-quarters of an 
hour late?” 

“As it happens, I’m a most punctual per- 
son,” I told him seriously. “I don’t see why 
you should imagine I am ever even a minute 
late. You’re quite as bad as the funny old gen- 
tleman I interviewed to-day. He uttered awful 
warnings about how I mustn’t expect to spend 
half my time being rung up by my friends on 
the office telephone, or have my afternoons off: 
for going to matinees. Even when he engaged 
me, he didn’t really seem to want to have me 
there at all.” 

“I am not surprised,” said Mr. Paul Lan- 
caster dryly, but with twinkling eyes. 1 1 1 think 
that if I were head of an office I shouldn’t be 
too keen on having you working there ! ’ ’ 

“Why not?” I demanded quite angrily. But 
I couldn’t get him to say why not, or to do any- 
thing but smile, rather exasperatingly. 

So I said stiffly, “I think you are rather rude. 
Also, that you haven’t much eye for character.” 
And then I turned and spent the rest of dinner 
32 


STOCKINGS AND A YOUNG MAN 


— this was at dessert — talking to my other 
neighbour. 

But afterwards, in the drawing-room, Mr. 
Paul Lancaster came up to the piano, where 
they had made me sit down and sing them some 
of the old Somersetshire songs, and he turned 
over for me, and told me that he rather won- 
dered I didn’t go in for singing instead of of- 
fice life. 

He actually said it would “seem more like 
me.” 

“I don’t think so at all,” I persisted. “I 
intend to get on very well in office life.” 

“Well, I hope you will, Miss Beaugard,” he 
said, quite nicely and gravely, though the smile 
which I liked so much didn’t seem very far 
away. “I hope you will be able to tell me all 
about it next time we meet. ’ ’ 

I wondered if there would be a next time. . . . 

But I don’t think I bothered very much about 
whether there would or not. 

Most of the next week I gave all my thoughts 
to the coming “job.” 


33 


CHAPTER III 


BUSINESS GIRLS 

O N that fateful Monday morning which 
saw me going to business for the first 
time in my life I climbed up those wide 
Georgian stairs, came to the door, and found 
that the brass plate which I had seen there be- 
fore had been taken away. 

Now, instead of the name “Mr. Allen/ 9 1 saw 
two names: 


Mr. ALLEN. 

Mr. PAUL LANCASTER. 

Even then I only realised vaguely that I had 
seen or heard that name somewhere else quite 
recently. I hadn’t time to “place” it before 
obeying the “Come in” in answer to my knock. 
I entered the white-panelled room again, and 
found myself face to face with — not the white- 
haired old gentleman who had made all those 
34 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


ridiculously unnecessary stipulations about the 
telephone and the afternoons oft — but with the 
tall figure and blonde face of the young engi- 
neer with whom I had got on so awfully well 
at the dinner party last week! 

This was indeed a delightful surprise — to 
think that I should actually be coming to busi- 
ness every day, and meeting somebody with 
whom I should not have to be on dry-as-dust, 
formal, business terms, but on quite jolly social 
ones! 

I gave a little gasp of amazement, and I felt 
myself turning quite pink, which was rather 
silly, and I wished I hadn’t; but you can’t help 
it if you have a very fair skin, and, besides, I 
was fearfully taken by surprise. Nobody could 
have helped being. 

He was surprised, too, for I heard him say 
u Hallo!” in such a boyish voice as he jumped 
up and took the hand which I held out to him. 

“I never thought you were here!” I said 
gaily. “ Isn’t it extraordinary, after the other 
night? Fancy! I shall be one of your clerks! 

35 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Are you going to be the head of affairs, instead 
of Mr. Allen? That will be jolly!” 

But, before I got to the end of this sentence, 
I saw the most curious and unexpected change 
come over the face of the young man to whom 
I was speaking. 

That nice smile faded quite away from out of 
his eyes and round his mouth. The little boy’s 
dimple disappeared. His face was once more 
a slab, and milch older looking. And his voice ! 
Oh! how “ grown up” and distant it had sud- 
denly become as he said to me, ‘ ‘ No; I am sec- 
onding Mr. Allen. He has a great deal of the 
research part of the work to do at this moment : 
in consequence I am taking over this side of 
it.” Then, quite brusquely, “I will take you 
into the clerks ’ room where you have to work . 9 9 

Through yet another door I heard the sound 
of a clear, girlish voice singing, in imitation of 
a Cockney music-hall serio, the words : 

4 ‘Don’t send my boy to prison! 

It’s the first crime he has done!” 

and then all in one breath : 

36 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


“Very well,” said the magistrate, “I’ll forgive him! 

Take back thy erring son ! ’ ’ 

This ditty stopped abruptly as Mr. Lancas- 
ter opened the door and we went in. 

The room was very much like his own office, 
but a little larger. There were three tables, 
with a girl at each. A tall, fair girl, a short, 
dark one, with mischievous eyes and a turned- 
up nose, who had, I guessed, been singing, and 
an older one with a sweet, rather sad face, and 
a good many grey threads in her hair. 

“Miss Rickards,’ ’ said Mr. Lancaster, to the 
one with the grey hair, “this is the new clerk, 
who has been sent on from the City.” 

“The new clerk!” As if he scarcely knew 
my name! As if he’d never seen me before! 
As if he hadn’t been quite, quite different and 
jolly, only a few evenings ago ! 

Oh, how changeable and unreliable men are ! 
It made me quite furious. That is, it might 
have made me furious. Only there’s no reason 
why I should mind, even if Mr. Paul Lancaster 
does choose to be one sort of person on Satur- 
37 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

day night and quite another on Monday morn- 
ing. 

Then, apparently losing sight of my very ex- 
istence, he disappeared back into his own room. 

The little dark-eyed clerk was the one who 
spoke to me first. 

‘ ‘ What a comfort to see a fresh face!” she 
began pleasantly. “We have got so sick of 
one another, seeing one another every day and 
all day from ten till five in this place. It is 
really quite as bad as being on a sea voyage with 
only three people on board. You cannot think 
how our features have begun to rankle in each 
other’s minds. I do my best to keep the other 
girls alive, but it is a deadening life, indexing 
— positively deadening! And you look 4 so 
young to die,’ as it says in the melodrama. 
What is your name?” 

I told them. 

“Beaugard! I’m glad it isn’t Robinson!” 
said the fair-haired girl unexpectedly. 

And when I asked her why, she replied : 

“ Because then, don’t you see, you would have 
spoiled our only joke calling ourselves ‘the 
38 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


three RV — Miss Rickards, Miss Royds, and 
myself. Rodney, my name is. I hope you ’ll 
like being here with us.” 

I felt, then, that I should. 

Already I’d taken a fancy to the place — 
the rooms with their view over wharves, barges, 
and tall chimneys beyond the Thames — already 
I liked these people . . . except Mr. Lancaster. 

He, the Chief, didn’t give anybody there a 
chance to like or dislike him. While in those 
rooms, Miss Royds declared, he never says a 
word except on business. 

The business, by the way, was a long and ex- 
haustive Report, drawn up by Mr. Allen on the 
various mines that had been inspected by him 
and Mr. Lancaster. It was to come out in the 
form of an Encyclopaedia on Mining Engineer- 
ing, of which the indexing and the proof-read- 
ing and even some of the arrangement was to 
be done by our four selves. 

For my share I was to get twenty-five 
shillings a week. I thought that enormous — 
imagine that, you present-day war-working 
girl-clerks ! — it paid for my room and board at 
39 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


the Club, but I had my own money to do as I 
liked with. 

By the way, I kept that extra four pounds a 
week a dead secret from my three colleagues. 
Oh, yes ! I had learnt my lesson at the business 
college. I was not going to let these three nice 
friendly girls know that I had what “Mac” 
called “pr-r-rivet mins.” No more sneers for 
me, thank you, about “Miss Rothschild”; no 
more being sent to Coventry, and being treated 
as if I were different from the others. 

Let them think I was entirely dependent on 
that twenty-five shillings ! 

Otherwise, I feared, they mightn’t like me 
any more. . . . 

As it was, they liked me well enough to nick- 
name me “Baby Beaugard” and to pretend they 
thought I came to business in a pram; and I 
felt, as the days went on, that I’d come to a 
place where I could be absolutely happy and 
jolly. 

There were only two drawbacks to it, I felt. 

40 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


One was Mr. Paul Lancaster. Stiff, horrid, un- 
friendly creature ! 

He had absolutely ignored my existence from 
the first day, except once to ask Miss Rickards 
how Miss Beaugard seemed to get on. And 
when Miss Rickards informed him that I got 
on very quickly and did very well, he never said 
a word. 

He, who was so “human” and jolly at that 
dinner-party! I felt that he must be an atro- 
cious snob; ready enough to talk and amuse a 
“young lady of leisure” he met on social terms, 
but not ready to consider “a business girl” who 
worked for her living (as he thought) as a fel- 
low-being at all ! 

Now he didn’t look that kind of man. . . . 
Never mind, I thought. Let him go on being 
oblivious of everything in the world but his 
“patent fans” and “mechanical ventilators.” 

I didn’t care! 

The other thing I did care about. 

The other thing had to do with the three nice 
people in the office; the three R’s. 

41 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

I very soon found out that they were not 
only obliged to work for their own livings 
whether they wanted to or not, but that in some 
ways they were just as pathetically hard-up as 
that little Scots “Mac” whom I offended so 
irretrievably at Mrs. Henderson’s. 

It was not a case with them of inking their 
heels because they have not any decent stock- 
ings, or of lunching off bread-and-butter. 

But Miss Rodney lived with a sister who was 
frightfully ill in the summer, and she spent her 
one fortnight’s holiday, which came in the very 
hottest weather, in staying and nursing her, 
doing night and day duty, so that she need not 
have a trained nurse. I heard her telling this, 
quite cheerfully, to Miss Rickards. 

Miss Rickards, the head of our department, 
had a widowed mother entirely dependent on 
what she — Miss Rickards — could earn. I sup- 
posed it was more than the rest of us — but, 
anyhow, it was not enough to allow of poor Miss 
Rickards getting married. 

She had been sort of engaged — that is, she 
had the unsatisfactory sort of affair they call 
42 


BUSINESS GIRLS 

“an understanding’ ’ — with some young man — 
I suppose he is not even young now — who 
teaches music in Dublin. 

He could not drop his post and come over to 
London, and she couldn’t chuck up hers and 
join him and leave her mother to starve ! All 
this was told me by little Miss Royds. 

Miss Royds had her trouble, too. She was 
one of a family of girls who were all very 
“gifted” — except her. But their “gifts” took 
up such a lot of money ! Two of them were at 
art schools, with fees to he paid there, besides 
what they cost at home. One of them was 
studying the violin in Leipsic. So that “my” 
Miss Royds simply had to do something for 
herself. 

There was not enough money to train her 
for the stage, which she would simply adore. 
If she has a “gift” it’s for imitations. ... It 
made me quite furious that she couldn’t get her 
chance too! 

Often I longed to say frankly, “Look here! 
I’ve four pounds a week of my own, just to play 
about with after I’ve paid my keep. Do, do 
43 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


take as much of it as you want to pay your fees 
with Benson or Tree ” 

Oh, it was a temptation ! 

But “Mac” and her friends had taught me 
my lesson. In this absurd world one is not al- 
lowed to play “Lady Bountiful” in that whole- 
sale and perfectly natural manner. 

Still, I thought, weren’t there other, and 
“little” ways in which my bothering money 
might be made to help these three girls? 

I tried one ‘ ‘ little way . 9 9 

I tried bringing in some extra nice cakes from 
a little French patisserie near my Club, and 
handing them round at teatime. 

We four made tea in the office in the after- 
noon, taking it in turn to provide, but until now 
the girls had only brought in farthing buns to 
eat with it. So I thought they would be rather 
pleased when I produced these jolly little round 
tartlets with syrupy cherries sitting in the 
midst of them. 

But Miss Royds only quoted: “I say, young 
Copperfield, you have been going it,” and 
looked rather anxious. 


44 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


It was her turn to provide tea the next time. 
She brought in lemon cheesecakes ; but the day 
after that Miss Rickards, whose turn it was, 
said resignedly: 

“ Girls, I can’t keep the pace. I am very 
sorry, but I have only got farthing buns, and 
you will have to wait until next week before I 
can produce any ‘ delicacies of the season,’ ” 
which made me feel perfectly awful. 

After that there was nothing but farthing 
buns, until Miss Royds triumphantly produced 
a brown jar of real clotted cream. Everybody 
stared at it. 

‘ ‘ Where on earth did you get this? Was it 
from the shop in Oxford Street where they sell 
Devonshire cream? Because, if so, what fright- 
ful extrav ” 

“My dear girls, don’t alarm yourselves,” 
said Miss Royds, laughing; “it was sent up to 
me by my aunt in Devonshire.” 

This seemed to make everything all right. 
The cream had been “sent” — not “bought” out 
of scanty earnings, whose every penny was be- 
spoke for necessities, not luxuries. 

45 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

And it gave me an idea. A plan ; a glorious 
plan! 1 would have “ things sent.” I would 
begin with fruit, which gentle Miss Rickards 
said was such a temptation of hers. 

I bought a round, open basket of William 
pears, and I was fearfully pleased with myself 
for remembering to take them out of the basket 
and put them into plain paper before I brought 
them round to the office in Westminster, and 
said they were “from the country.” (So they 
were, I expect, originally!) 

Everybody enjoyed them. Then I hit upon 
a better idea still. On the Friday I drew Miss 
Royds aside and said: “Look what I have had 
sent to me!” displaying two tickets for the Sat- 
urday matinee of a play which I had heard her 
say she particularly wanted to see. 

“My dear, how lovely!” cried Miss Royds, 
looking at the tickets as if she could eat them 
with her eyes. 

“The person who sent them can’t take me,” 
I went on, which was quite true, as I don f t sup- 
pose the man at the box office to which I wrote 
for them would have been able to even if I’d 
46 


BUSINESS GIRLS 


asked him, “so if you would care to take the 
other stall ? It would be lovely for me.” 

“Oh, you angel! You little gem of a Gains- 
borough cherub!” cried Miss Royds, and 
hugged me in her gratitude. ‘ ‘ Girls, girls ! do 
you hear this? It’s an ill wind that blows no- 
body any good ! I did so want a chance of see- 
ing this. Isn’t it perfectly lovely (for me) 
that Miss Beaugard’s friend was prevented 
from coming?” 

Then came the question that began all the 
trouble in this story of mine. 

“By the way, Miss Beaugard,” said Miss 
Rodney mischievously, “would it be indiscreet 
to ask who was the person who was prevented 
from coming?” 

I blushed guiltily, merely at the thought of 
the fibs I was allowing to be understood, but 
the girls interpreted my red cheeks very dif- 
ferently. 

“Don’t tease the child,” said Miss Rickards, 
smiling. “A baby could see that the tickets 
were sent by an admirer of this other Baby’s, 
so we’ll ask no more questions.” 

47 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


For which I was grateful. 

An ‘ ‘ admirer, ’ ’ indeed! 

What an idea. 

Still, I thought, what a splendid loophole for 
showering upon these hard-up friends of mine 
as many little “extras” as my income could 
afford! 

Yes; I just thought of it as a loophole. . . . 
If I ’d only known what it would turn out to be ! 


48 


CHAPTER IV 


“when first we practise to DECEIVE” 

I N the course of the next week that “loop- 
hole” of fictional “admirer” of mine pro- 
vided concert tickets at Queen’s Hall for 
Miss Rickards, and a big box of chocolates (such 
as few of us nowadays have ever tasted since 
Nineteen Fifteen!) to brighten up the tea and 
farthing buns. 

Then came one little hitch in this delightful 
arrangement. 

“This adorer of yours keeps himself very 
darkly and mysteriously in the background, 
Baby,” said Miss Rodney, munching away at 
a particularly luscious coffee cream; “I would 
bless his name for these sweets and things, only, 
unfortunately, I do not know what name to 
bless. Couldn’t you tell me, even his Christian 
name ! ” 


49 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“I don’t know who you are talking about ,’ 9 
I hedged. 

6 ‘ Well, this mysterious admirer of yours who 
keeps sending these lovely things, and yet 
doesn’t allow us so much as a glimpse of his 
face. Why doesn’t he ever call for you and 
take you home?” 

“How do you know,” I said, “that he doesn’t 
live too far away, and get back from business 
too late himself?” 

I had to make up some excuse, but the effort 
turned me crimson, and the three R’s all fixed 
their eyes on that incriminating blush until it 
turned at least four shades darker. 

“Has his business too far away, has he?” 
repeated Miss Royds with emphasis. “Oh, so 
that’s it ! You’ll forgive my saying I think that 
is a little bit thin.” 

“What do you mean?” I cried anxiously. 
Could it be that the girls by some means or an- 
other were beginning to suspect what I was 
doing? “Why d’you say that?” 

“I will say nothing more,” said Miss Royds, 
good-naturedly. “I think it’s a shame to rag 
50 


‘‘WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 

girls about that sort of thing. But” — she 
laughed mischievously again — “we all have our 
suspicions, Miss Beaugard, so don’t imagine 
that we have not. The three R’s have got six 
eyes, remember!” 

I went back to the Club with these words 
echoing in my ears. 

‘ ‘Suspicions ! ’ ’ 

How could they have their suspicions? What 
in the world could have put the idea into their 
heads that these concert and theatre tickets, 
those sweets and that nice fruit are luxuries 
which I could afford for myself? 

Why should they take Miss Boyds’ “Devon- 
shire aunt” for granted and yet begin putting 
two and two together — odious trick ! — about my 
“mysterious admirer”? 

Perhaps the fact was that they had met the 
aunt, and knew her by name, whereas nobody 
had seen my admirer, and Miss Royds actually 
complained of not being allowed to know his 
name? 

What was I to do? 

I did want to be able to go on cheering up the 
51 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

daily round and common task for all of us by 
little presents and little outings, but I knew that 
if I did go on, and the three R’s did become 
perfectly sure that there was no “ sending’ ’ and 
no “ mysterious admirer” in question, they 
would begin saying things about not standing 
the pace set by expensive fruit and chocolates. 

They would begin making excuses for not 
coming with me to those theatres and concerts, 
and I should be made perfectly miserable. I 
should mind it more than anything. Far worse 
than I minded Mr. Lancaster never seeming to 
see that he has got a fourth clerk now instead 
of only three. 

Not that I really mind that at all. Why 
should I? 

I felt I must think of a plan to “back up” 
my tale of a mysterious and generous admirer 
somehow. The question was — how? 

I had got just as far as this in my meditations 
when something happened. . . . 

It didn’t seem to me, then, that this something 
was as important and as fatal to me as that 
52 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


meeting with the Witches was to Macbeth. How 
could I foresee ? 

Well, this was what it was. 

I had been walking a good deal of the way 
home through the Park, my eyes fixed on the 
path, with its thick carpet of autumn leaves 
through which I was shuffling, in the habit of 
my childhood, enjoying the pleasant country 
noise. 

Suddenly, among the russet-brown leaves, I 
caught sight of something that spat out sparks 
of fire in the last rays of the sun. I stooped 
to see whether it was a bit of broken glass or 
somebody’s diamond brooch. 

It was neither. I picked it up, and stood for 
a while looking at it as I held it in my hand. 

It was a gentleman’s card-case in rather 
shabby soft leather, with silver corners and a 
silver shield in the middle engraved with the 
initials “P. W. 1858.” I opened it. There 
were about a dozen gentleman’s visiting-cards 
with the inscription: “Mr. Paul Wright, 178a 
Well Walk, Hampstead, N.W.” 

“Paul” — the same name as Mr. Lancaster. 

53 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

I always thought Paul made rather a nice 
Christian name for a man. 

Of course, the right thing would have been 
to find the nearest park keeper or guardian, and 
give him the card-case, with an account of how 
I found it. Simpler still, as I had his address, 
would it have been to forward it, with a slip of 
paper “ Picked up in the Park,” to this Mr. 
Paul Wright, whoever he is. 

(He must be quite an elderly man; 4 ‘ 1858” 
was a long time ago, and he could not have 
been less than twenty-one when he first started 
visiting-cards.) 

Then a thought struck me that made me want 
to clap my hands and cry “ Hooray” like a 
child. . . . 

Oh, I was a child! I was a Baby, for my 
age: else how could I have thought of such a 
thing? I can scarcely believe it of myself now 
— yet, it seemed perfectly natural to me then. 
I saw nothing against it ! 

I remember how I thought about it. 

Here was this card-case, not a valuable thing, 
very shabby, and probably not wanted by the 
54 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


owner any more. Anyhow, he could not need 
it as badly as I did for the plan I had. 

For the plan was to use his name to the girls 
for that of my mysterious admirer. 

What was the harm ? The old gentleman him- 
self would never know. I should never see him 
or meet him. It would save the situation all 
round. Nobody would he a halfpenny the wiser, 
and four girls would be very much happier. 

That, if you please, was what I thought. 

Next morning, on my way to Westminster, I 
stopped at the nicest-looking flower shop I could 
see, and recklessly bought a whole sovereign’s 
worth of flowers — a great sheaf of white 
chrysanthemums with ragged, spice-smelling 
blooms as big as cauliflowers, and another sheaf 
of sprays of blood-red lobelia. 

These were for show. There was an empty 
jar or so on the mantelpiece in the room where 
we worked, and the living scarlet and white 
against those faded old panels would simply 
“make” the room. 

Then, for scent, I took a generous handful of 
red hothouse roses and four huge bunches of 
55 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
lilies of the valley. These I planned to divide 
among the lot of us. 

As they were supposed to come from “Miss 
Beaugard’s mysterious admirer/ ’ 1 knew I need 
not be afraid of the girls stiffly refusing them. 
And I really did feel proud of my scheming 
powers as I paid for this floral tribute, and left 
directions with the pretty girl in black who had 
served me about where they were to be sent. 

At a quarter past four that afternoon, the 
hour of the preparation for tea, there appeared 
at Frith Chambers an immense paper-shaded 
bouquet, the flowers almost hiding the small 
messenger-boy who had brought them up for 
“Miss Beaugard.” Of course, he went to the 
wrong room first, and took them in to Mr. Lan- 
caster, but I did not mind that. The thought 
flashed through me (though I also felt it was 
rather silly) that, anyhow, Mr. Lancaster would 
see that somebody did “notice” his fourth and 
youngest clerk, even if he did not ! 

And when the redirected messenger brought 
the bouquet through to our room, the outburst 
of delighted ‘ ‘ Ohs ! ” “ What heavenly flowers ! 1 9 

56 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


and “Do let me have just one sniff at those 
lilies,” satisfied my highest expectations. 

“The ‘ mysterious admirer’ again, Miss Beau- 
gard?” laughed Miss Royds. And I said, as 
casually as I could: “Yes, I suppose so. Do 
you mind handing me that piece of paper! 
There might be a note on it.” 

There was not a note, as I knew very well, 
but I knew what I meant was stuck into the very 
bunch which I had handed Miss Royds for the 
special purpose of her finding it out herself. 

She did. She picked out the gentleman’s vis- 
iting-card from among the waxen, fragrant bells 
of the lilies. 

“I say, girls, here’s a card. Oh, I’m much 
too honourable to look without permission. If 
only Miss Beaugard would be the little cherub 
she looks like” — coaxingly — “and allow me one 
peep !” 

“You may certainly look if you like,” I said 
graciously, and at this permission (quite un- 
expected, I am sure) a fair head, a dark head, 
and a head of brown hair streaked with grey, 
57 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


craned eagerly to read the name of the giver 
of the flowers. 

It was Miss Royds, who so longs to be trained 
for the stage, who read aloud, dramatically: 
“Mr. Paul Wright !” 

“Mr. Paul Wright!” echoed the two others, 
as if they scarcely believed their ears and eyes. 

And Miss Rodney added : 

“Well, that does surprise me!” 

‘ ‘ Surprise you ! Why f Have you met him f ’ ’ 
I cried, in a fright. This would indeed be the 
last straw! 

“Met him? No, of course not. The only 
thing was that we really thought we knew ” 

She broke off. 

“Thought you knew what?” 

“Why, that we already knew who your ‘mys- 
terious admirer’ must be.” 

“Oh!” I gave a deep sigh of relief. Was 
she going to confess now to what she thought 
her “suspicions” had been? Was she going to 
tell me that she suspected me of sending little 
presents to the office from myself? 

58 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


“I thought ” began Miss Rodney. “We 

all thought ” 

Miss Rickards interrupted: 

“Oh, perhaps it is not quite fair to say any 
more about that now.” 

“Yes, yes, you must tell me! Who did you 
suspect sent me those tickets and that fruit and 
those lilies and things? Did you imagine ” 

“We imagined,” confessed Miss Rodney, 
“that we knew the young man as well as you 
did.” 

‘ ‘ The young man ? ” I repeated, staring from 
one of the three girls to the other. 

I was completely taken aback by what they’d 
said, because I don’t really “know” any young 
men in London — for I simply refuse to count 
that boring Georgie Settle. 

I caught Miss Rickards by her arm, and 
cried : 

“Do tell me who you thought ‘the young 
man’ was?” 

“Oh, no, no ! It was our mistake. We were 
all wrong, that’s all. Least said soonest 
mended!” 


59 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“But it won’t be soonest mended,” I per- 
sisted, burning with curiosity. “I shall be 
dreadfully hurt — I shall be huffy and offended 
and upset for the rest of the afternoon — I shall, 
indeed! — unless you tell me at once who you 
thought the ‘ mysterious admirer’ was who sent 
me flowers, and met me after business, and all 
that?” 

“Well, if you must know, my dear,” blurted 
out little Miss Royds, with a “neck-or-nothing” 
look on her mischievous face, “we all imagined, 
talking it over, that it must be — our Mr. Lan- 
caster ! ’ ’ 

This was, with a vengeance, the very last 
name I should have expected to hear. 

“Mr. Lancaster?” I almost shrieked. “This 
Mr. Lancaster here?” 

“Well, of course!” 

“But he’s never looked at me!” I cried. 

“Oh, hasn’t he?” retorted Miss Royds. 
“We’ve noticed — haven’t we, girls? — that our 
respected employer never comes into this room 
to bring more notes, or to see how things are 
getting along, without contriving to get one 
60 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE" 


good hard stare at Baby Beaugard, just as he is 
going out of the door. Of course, he pretends 
he isn’t doing anything of the kind. But — 
well, are men any good at ‘pretending’ things 
of that sort? We’ve all caught him at it!” 

“Yes; and he always has some excuse to 
stand by your table, Miss Beaugard, much 
longer than by any of ours,” declared Miss 
Rodney. “And the other day, when you turned 
up with your hair parted at the side instead of 
in the middle, I saw him noticing that, and 
thinking that it didn’t suit you quite so well as 
the other way. I saw it in his eye ! ’ ’ 

“Not in Mr. Lancaster’s,” I persisted em- 
phatically. “He never gives me a thought. 
You’re all mistaken.” 

“I,” said Miss Rickards with a look that 
comes into her eyes when she is thinking of 
her music teacher in Dublin, “am not often 
mistaken on that subject.” 

“You are this time,” said I. “I happen to 
Icnow that when Mr. Lancaster does remember 
my existence, it’s merely to dislike me. He 
said, the only time I met him outside the office, 
61 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

and before be knew I was engaged here, that 
he wouldn’t care to have me working for him. 
So you see!” 

“Yes,” said Miss Rickards. And I think she 
added, “Poor fellow!” I don’t know what she 
meant. 

“Otherwise he hasn’t spoken a word to me 
that you haven’t all heard. And now,” I con- 
cluded, picking up the man’s visiting-card that 
had saved the situation, “you’ve all seen for 
yourselves where flowers and tickets and things 
I get come from!” 

“Do you mind my asking, Miss Beaugard,” 
said gentle Miss Rickards, in her kindest, most 
motherly tone, “if it’s a definite engagement — 
yet?” 

“Oh, no! Most probably it never will be!” 
I hastened to add. (A good thing to get that 
idea firmly into their heads. ) “ It ’s just friend- 

liness!” 

Miss Rickards demurely said she knew those 
“friendly interests.” 

“Yes, and we prefer to hope that it’s a case 
of ‘Mr. Right coming along’ — if you’ll excuse 
62 


“WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


the aged jest and pun!” laughed Miss Royds. 
“So glad, dear. Not with an entirely unselfish 
joy, either. These lilies will be the very thing 
for my sister, who ’s going to a dance to-night ; 
and as for that matinee last Saturday, I don’t 
know when I’ve laughed so much. I really 
think it would be only fitting to drink Mr. Paul 
Wright’s health!” 

She raised her three-halfpenny white kitchen 
teacup from the saucer with the farthing bun 
in it, and flourished it excitedly above her dark 
head. 

“Ladies!” she declaimed. “I ask you to 
raise your glasses and drink to the very good 
health of Mr. Paul Wright, of Well Walk, 
Hampstead. Here’s success to him in every 
enterprise, and a very happy finale to his court- 
ship!” And she put the empty cup down with 
a bang. 

Why, why has Miss Royds got that clear, 
“carrying” sort of voice 1 

It might be a very good thing for the dra- 
matic classes which she so longs to attend, but 
it has been an extremely bad thing for our room ! 

63 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

Several times Mr. Lancaster has had to look 
in with a glance of protest against some of the 
recitations and songs with which she will en- 
liven us when she thinks that he has gone out. 

I suppose she thought that he had gone out 
at this moment. At all events, her toast had 
been declaimed with such gusto that neither she 
nor any of us — we all had our backs to the door 
— had heard it open to admit Mr. Lancaster. 

4 4 Miss Rickards !” he said, raising his voice a 
little. 

Miss Rickards turned with a little jump. 
There stood our employer, tall and fair, grey- 
eyed, and looking as imperturbable as ever, 
while all the rest of us, particularly Miss Royds, 
tried hard to look as if we did not exist. 

He leaned over Miss Rickards’ table, and 
handed her a sheaf of fresh notes for re-ar- 
rangement. Then he gave her a few more or- 
ders in a low voice which I did not catch. Then 
he went out again, closing the door quietly be- 
hind him. Miss Rickards came over to me with 
a rather 1 ‘ sorry” expression on her face. 

“Miss Beaugard, my child, I’m afraid you 

64 


4 4 WHEN WE PRACTISE TO DECEIVE” 


are in for it. I recopied that page of notes on 
shaft-sinking that you made a mess of this 
morning, but Pm afraid it’s no good, and that 
the governor saw I had had to do your work 
over again. He wants you to go into his room 
and speak to him for a few minutes as soon as 
you have finished your tea.” 

Nervously I finished my tea; nervously I 
hurried into Mr. Lancaster’s room and stood 
opposite to his desk, my back to the window. 

Oh, what did this mean? Could it be that 
he was going to give me notice for carelessness? 

Or was it just a “talking-to” — as I called 

it? how curious to think that in those days 

we had never heard of such a thing as a 
“ strafing,” as it would now be termed. 

I did hope I was not to be sent away from 
Westminster and those nice girls! 

“Sit down, Miss Beaugard, please,” said Mr. 
Lancaster quietly, and I took a chair. 

He took up an ivory paper knife from his 
desk, and fixed his grey eyes on that — not on 
me! as he began to speak. 

“I want to say a few words to you, Miss 
65 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

Beaugard. I hope you won’t think them im- 
pertinent — they are not meant to be so — on the 
subject of — of” — he hesitated, cleared his 
throat, and went on — “ those flowers that you 
received here this afternoon.” 

‘ ‘Oh, yes; I am so sorry!” I broke in, anx- 
ious to excuse myself, and to escape “the sack,” 
if I possibly could. “I know it was a rule at 
Mrs. Henderson’s that flowers and letters and 
things were not to be sent up to the girls during 
business hours, but I thought that it would not 
matter here where there are so few of us, and 
where it doesn’t seem the same as an office, 
exactly. But it shan’t occur again: I won’t 
have anything sent. I will arrange differently. 
I am so sorry about the flowers.” 

“It was not the flowers to which I was tak- 
ing exception,” said Mr. Lancaster, rather in 
a hesitating manner, as if he did not quite know 
how to put what he was going to say next. 
What he did say was a thunderclap, the third 
that afternoon ! 

“Frankly, Miss Beaugard, it’s the person 
who sent them to you.” 

66 


CHAPTER V 


AN UNEXPECTED PROTEST 

1 COULD only stare at him. 

He did not look at me. 

I know, now, that no man on earth ever 
felt more uncomfortable than did Mr. Paul Lan- 
caster, over the protest which he felt himself 
in duty bound to make to me. 

He was far more nervous than I was ! though 
I did not guess it as he went on hurriedly: “You 
see, I — I could not help overhearing what Miss 
Royds said just now. I heard that — that those 
flowers that were sent in for you this afternoon 
came from Mr. Paul Wright, who lives in Hamp- 
stead. That was so, wasn’t it?” 

What could I say but “Yes”? 

I felt myself turning crimson over the fib. 
This made me so angry that I could have taken 
up his heavy, square glass paper-weight from 
67 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
his desk and thrown it at Mr. Paul Lancaster’s 
head. 

“I also could not help gathering,” he went 
on, almost apologetically, “that there had been 
other offerings on other occasions from the 
same quarter.” 

There was a pause while I wondered what all 
this meant, and what on earth I ought to say. 

I simply couldn’t think of anything! 

Then I heard coming out of my own lips a 
voice like that of a very defiant and rather un- 
dignified little schoolgirl, saying, “Well?” 

And then Mr. Lancaster ’s voice, stiff and cold 
because — oh, I know it now! because he was 
so miserably uncomfortable at having to speak 
about this thing at all. An older woman might 
have known that his tone was appealing as he 
said, “Well, I — I ought to tell you that you 
ought not to take flowers or — or anything, 
really, from him.” 

The obvious reply was simple. “Why?” I 
asked, still in that schoolgirl voice. 

I don’t know what I expect Mr. Lancaster to 
say to this. Certainly not what he did say. 

68 


AN UNEXPECTED PROTEST 

“You see, I know Mr. Wright.” 

I felt myself turning icy-cold with fright. 
He knew this unknown Mr. Wright? Horrors l 
Mr. Lancaster knew the man whom I’d set up 
as “a mysterious admirer” of my own! Could 
anything have been more fatal? He knew him ! 

“I know him very well,” said Mr. Lancaster. 
“Better than you do.” 

(This was so easy!) 

He went on: “I — You must let me tell you 
that I know him well enough to say that he 
isn’t at all the kind of man who ought to be 
allowed to send flowers and theatre-tickets and 
to pay attentions to a girl like — to a girl who — 
to any girl,” concluded Mr. Lancaster, clearing 
his throat and looking at his paper-knife with 
an odd expression in his grey eyes. 

I know now what the expression was ; it was 
the rueful despair of a very young man who 
knows that he has not said what he meant to 
say, that he has put everything in the wrong 
way, and that he doesn’t know how on earth to 
make matters better. 

He went on in a louder and firmer tone: “If 
69 


THE WEONG MR. RIGHT 


you were my sister, you see, I should feel I 
ought to warn you against him. And I — er- — 
should forbid ” 

“Forbid” — I echoed, so angry at the word 
that for the moment I forgot the appalling fix 
that I was in. 

Forbid ! That word, from a man to a woman, 
reminded me of Great-uncle Joseph and my 
brother Jim, and Georgie Settle, and “Mr. 
Right,” and everything I didn’t want in my 
life. 

Why should this young man think he had the 
slightest right to dictate to me? Besides — if 
he only knew — If he only knew that I had never 
seen the man he was warning me against! 

Could I tell him 

A thousand times no ! 

But if he knew this Mr. Wright — if he spoke 
to him about me ? 

There would be a fresh complication! I 
heard myself ask, in a shakier little voice: 
“Have you — have you seen Mr. Wright about 
this?” 

“I don’t see him, now,” said Mr. Lancaster, 

70 


AN UNEXPECTED PROTEST 


gloomily. I felt relieved. Here was a kind of 
respite at all events. 

Mr. Lancaster, evidently going back to the 
topic of family forbiddance, asked, “Have you 
a brother V 9 (apparently of the ivory paper 
knife). 

“Yes; one — in Ceylon/ ’ I said, again in the 
tone of “Thank goodness he isn’t here.” 

“I am pretty certain that he would not ap- 
prove if 99 

“It would make no difference to me what he 
approved or disapproved of,” I said. “He 
didn’t ‘approve’ of my coming to work in Lon- 
don.” 

“Ah !” 

“Yet here I am,” I said. “You see, I am 
well over twenty-one, and independent. Surely 
I’m old enough and sensible enough to know 
how to take care of myself!” 

Why Mr. Paul Lancaster should seem 
tempted to smile at this I did not know. It 
was the first time, since the first day, that I had 
caught sight of the flash of his even white teeth 
71 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
and the boyish dimple in his cheek that comes 
with the smile I’d found so attractive. 

But I didn’t find it attractive now. I could 
have slain him for it. I got up from my chair 
and stood with my hands clenched on the back 
of it, facing him. I was simply boiling over 
with indignation ; petulant infant that I was ! 

Then I put on what I hoped was a mask of 
dignified calm. I said, “As you are not any 
brother of mine, I fail to see what right you 
have to interfere in — in any — er — friendship of 
mine.” 

Friendship! A friendship that didn’t exist! 
But the principle existed, I told myself in- 
wardly. It was the principle of this thing that 
stiffened my backbone and lent me the pluck to 
stand up in his office to my business em- 
ployer. . . . 

(Poor lad!) 

His smile had gone abruptly. He too put on 
a dignity; and a sudden chill fell upon me at 
the sight. I thought, swiftly, “Suppose he 
sends me away, now! ’ ’ 


72 


AN UNEXPECTED PROTEST 


Then I thought, still more swiftly, 1 t Well! 
I’ll get it in first, anyhow/ ’ 

So, I said, “I suppose you will give me no- 
tice, at this.” 

“ Notice? To go?” said Mr. Lancaster. 

“Yes,” I said with angry tears not very far 
away. “You have a perfect right to sack me, 
of course, even if you haven’t the right to ” 

Mr. Lancaster put up his hand and pushed 
back his thick, ash-blonde hair. In a voice that 
was puzzled and distressed, I know now, as 
well as irritable, he exclaimed, “Good Lord, I 
don ’t want to sack you ! ’ ’ 

“I — may stay on, then?” 

“Of course,” he said, knitting the brows over 
those honest boy’s eyes of his. “All I wanted 
to tell you was — well! I’ve told you, more or 
less.” 

A sudden feeling came over me that in spite 
of the way I’d been “cornered,” I had the best 
of it now. 

I turned to the door, then turned back with 
the proverbial last word. 

“Then,” I said, “let me tell you — that I don’t 

73 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


think I can allow you to dictate to me out of 
business hours. As — as your clerk I will take 
your orders, Mr. Lancaster. Otherwise I in- 
tend to please myself — and my friends.’ ’ 

There ! ... It certainly sounded appallingly 
rude, once it was said. Still, it was out now. 

I marched to the door. 

Mr. Lancaster was going to open it for 
me. . . . 

I was glad, in my temper, that he was too 
late! 

I felt that never in my life had I resented 
any one as I resented that young man. 

As for the added risk of his knowing “Mr. 
Wright” and speaking to him about me, I 
didn’t care! I’d just take the risk! 


74 


CHAPTER VI 


A VISITOR AND AN ERRAND 

N ATURALLY I wondered, as the days 
went on, why Mr. Lancaster disapproved 
so much of this man that he knew — and 
that I didn’t. 

Mr. Paul Wright ! I was sure he was a most 
harmless person. How can an old gentleman of 
that age help being harmless? I imagined 
him pottering quietly about his Hampstead 
home, or taking little strolls on the Heath, or 
feeding the swans on Highgate Ponds, or even 
being wheeled in a bath-chair up and down the 
Spaniard’s Road. 

Why, why, should Mr. Lancaster suggest that 
he was “undesirable”? 

I could only put it down to what I had al- 
ready summed up as “the snobbishness” of the 
young engineer. It was the same snobbishness 
75 


THE WBONG MR. RIGHT 


that made his manner to a girl at a dinner-party 
so different from his manner when he discov- 
ered that she was only a business-girl. 

Probably (I decided to myself) he considered 
that Mr. Wright “ wasn’t quite a gentleman/ ’ 
or something of that sort. Perhaps that was 
why he (Mr. Lancaster) told me that he “ didn’t 
see him now.” . . . 

He said nothing further, as the days went on, 
though I must say that I gave him cause. 

Again and again I continued to receive atten- 
tions from that Mr. Wright whose name I had 
been taking in vain. 

Several times flowers, once a new book from 
Mudie’s, which I heard Miss Rickards say she 
wanted to read, and once a couple of tickets 
for the Court Theatre, which I gave to Miss 
Royds and Miss Rodney, saying I had “made 
other arrangements.” 

From their pleased and sympathetic smiles 
I saw at once that they thought the “arrange- 
ment” was for me and “my” Mr. Wright to 
go off somewhere together. 

Poor dear unsuspecting old gentleman, I 
76 


A VISITOR— AND AN ERRAND 


thought, and I had the grace to feel my con- 
science prick me on his behalf. 

Then I told myself that, even if it were wrong 
to use a real man’s name as a peg on which to 
hang convenient fictions, the end justified the 
means. 

Why, besides the flowers and theatre tickets 
and things that brighten the daily hard-work- 
ing lives of my friends, the three R’s, the very 
mystery and the unexplained love-affair about 
the place seemed to brighten every one up enor- 
mously. 

The girls were always fishing with questions, 
spoken and unspoken, for more information 
about my mysterious admirer, for whom they 
invented all kinds of names of their own — 
" Prince Fondant,” the "Rosenkavalier,” and 
the 4 'Earl of Tickets.” But, as they all say, 
"It is very difficult to get Miss Beaugard to 
give away anything but his offerings!” 

Little did they dream that was all I had to 
"give away,” except an ancient leather-and- 
silver case, and a dozen or so of visiting-cards 
77 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
of an old gentleman on whom I had never set 
eyes! 

On the day that I had sent in a great sheaf 
of pink and fragrant carnations, another fresh 
excitement happened at Frith Chambers. 

A visitor called to see Mr. Lancaster in his 
room, and apparently had a regular, vulgar 
“row” with him about something. 

Through the walls we heard a man’s voice 
being loudly raised; we caught some of the 
words : 

“What d’you mean? . . . What the” ( 

something) “has it got to do with you? . . . 
What business. . . . Dashed cheek! . . . Dashed 
if I let myself be dictated to by you!” 

(I felt that whoever Mr. Lancaster’s caller 
was, I rather sympathised with his sentiments.) 

Then came a word or so in our employer’s 
lower tone, then the loudly angry voice again. 

“You know nothing about me, never have, and 
you can go to ” 

Here a door banged. 

78 


A VISITOR— AND AN ERRAND 


Steps ran quickly and lightly down the 
wooden staircase. 

“Now what on earth was all that about ?” 
murmured little Miss Royds over her work. 

A minute or two later our own door opened, 
and there came in, with rather a scared face, 
Miss Rickards who had been out to get some 
stationery of which we had unexpectedly run 
short. 

“My dears,” she exclaimed, “who was the 
young madman or something who’s just been in 
here?” 

“Oh, you saw him!” exclaimed Miss Rod- 
ney, looking up. “We didn’t — we only heard 
him having a row royal with our respected em- 
ployer. You met him?” 

“I should think so,” said Miss Rickards. 
“He nearly ran me down on the stairs. He 
was tearing down them as if he had a wild bull 
at his heels.” 

“What was he like?” asked inquisitive little 
Miss Rodney. 

“Oh, young, long-legged, smooth fair hair- 
79 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
curiously enough, now I think of it, he wasn’t 
unlike ” 

Here Mr. Lancaster came into the room with 
a stack of fresh copy to be indexed. He also 
brought a commission which he explained to the 
head-clerk in our room. 

Some hooks of Mr. Allen’s, which he scarcely 
trusted out of his own hands, had to be exam- 
ined by another expert for verification, and re- 
turned that same afternoon. 

‘ ‘ I shall have to ask one of you ladies to take 
them for me,” he said, as he came into our 
room. ‘ ‘ Not you, Miss Rickards, as I shall have 
to be out myself this afternoon, and I want you 
to interview that man from the printer’s. Miss 
Rodney, I think you have your hands full with 
those articles which I want ready by this eve- 
ning. I shall have to ask you to go, Miss 
Royds.” 

Miss Royds, who simply loves “out,” bright- 
ened up at once. 

Then, like the good-natured little soul that 
she is, she said : 


80 


A VISITOR— AND AN ERRAND 


“Do you mind my asking if Miss Beaugard 
may go this time instead of me?” 

“Why?” asked Mr. Lancaster directly, and 
he turned round and looked at me for the first 
time for days. 

I looked away, of course ; I did hate men who 
stared at me. 

“Miss Beaugard came in with a headache this 
morning,” explained Miss Royds, “and I 
thought perhaps, if it was the same to you, that 
it would be a good thing if she could take an 
hour or so off from work in the fresh air, since 
one of us has to go.” 

“Very well,” said Mr. Lancaster, quietly. 
Which was nice of him. But he added: “You 
had better both go. Those books are a little 
heavy to carry.” 

However, by the time we had got our hats on, 
and had presented ourselves for the two pack- 
ets of books and the note to Mr. Lancaster’s 
friend, I thought I saw in a flash why it was 
that he had sent two of his typists on an errand 
for which one would have done perfectly well. 

The reason was in the address to which these 
81 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

things had to be taken. It was in Hampstead. 

Mr. Wright’s neighbourhood. . . . 

Probably he thought 

Well, the thought of what Mr. Lancaster 
thought made me so angry again that I resolved 
to do — what he did think ! 

By the time we had finished with Mr. Lan- 
caster’s friend, a white-haired old professor, 
who lived at the very top of a block of tall, red- 
brick buildings looking towards Highgate, it 
was time for lunch, which we had in the High 
Street teashop, and after this I told Miss Royds 
that I wanted to go a little way round ‘ 4 to look 
at a house.” 

Miss Royds, of course, immediately suspected 
me of house-hunting, for some nice place in 
which to settle down with my Mr. Wright ! 

I smiled; I did not say anything about this 
being Mr. Wright’s own house. In a few min- 
utes we turned into Well Walk, a straight ave- 
nue of lime trees, with the houses on one side 
standing back by the raised pavement. 

“The” house was on this side. It was a 
82 


A VISITOR— AND AN ERRAND 


large place — tall, with nice big windows and 
grey walls overgrown with Virginia creeper, 
now wearing its crimson autumn tints. 

Yes, it was just the place one would expect 
to be inhabited by a kind-hearted, prosperous, 
elderly gentleman who was fond of giving pres- 
ents. 

The very place ? What about the person ? 
What a pity the green door was shut, and that 
I did not catch a glimpse of anybody at the: 
curtained windows ! 

Just as I was thinking this, the green door 
suddenly opened. 


83 


CHAPTER VII 


A COMPLIMENT AND A CATASTROPHE 

Y ES; the door opened. 

But it was not an old gentleman who 
came out. 

It was a hospital nurse, young and very 
smart-looking, in a long purple cloak and a little 
bonnet with a purple velvet bow. 

She was supporting what looked like a bundle 
of black chiffon motor-veils and black moire 
silk, but the veils parted in the breeze, and 
showed me the face of an old lady. She was 
leaning partly on the nurse’s arm, and partly 
on a silver-topped ebony stick. 

1 ‘This, of course,” I thought to myself, “is 
my Mr. Wright’s wife — Mrs. Paul Wright.” 
And I slightly slackened my pace, and glanced 
covertly at the old lady as she came slowly down 
the wide steps, and on to the road. 

She wore a wide black mushroom hat, fram- 
84 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 

ing white hair, and a face that reminded me of 
Gainsborough’s Duchess of Devonshire, grown 
old. 

What a handsome, aristocrat-of-the-Revolu- 
tion old face! Imperious, too . . . showing in 
every line that its owner could be a tyrant and 
a tartar if she liked. But imperiousness in an 
old lady did not exasperate me as it did — in a 
young man. 

As she was fastening the gate behind her the 
nurse dropped a big rug that she was carrying 
on her other arm. 

With surprising quickness, the old lady 
turned upon her, and cried, in a clear tone as 
imperious as her eyes : 

“Ah, Orpheus, clumsy cat! You’re always 
dropping everything! You’d drop your head 
if it was not fastened on!” 

The rug had fallen at my feet. I hastily 
picked it up, and returned it to the pretty nurse, 
who was smiling, unmoved, at the old lady. 

“Thank you, my dear,” said the old lady to 
me very graciously. “It is a relief to find good 
manners among young people of the present 
85 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


day. I often think the young women are get- 
ting as had as the young men, though perhaps 
nothing could be that. What is your name, 
child ?" she added, while the blue eyes seemed 
to be taking in every detail of my appearance. 

“Beaugard — Morwenna Beaugard," I stam- 
mered, rather taken aback. 

“ Morwenna! Yes, that means ‘ white as the 
sea,’ " took up the old lady quite unexpectedly, 
for I don't often find people who know the 
meaning of the name I inherited from my Welsh 
grandmother. “A pretty name for a pretty 
girl." 

She looked at me for another second, and 
then said in a musing, gentle, stately way, “I 
like to think that there will be some pretty girls 
left walking about on the earth when I, who was 
so pretty myself once, am lying underneath it. 
Heaven be kind to you, little Miss Morwenna, 
and give you the sweetheart you want, and 
teach you how to keep him when you have got 
him, my dear, which is a far more difficult thing 
— and important. Good afternoon, young la- 
dies!" 


86 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 


Then she and the nnrse passed on slowly 
towards a seat under the elms on the Heath 
while Miss Royds and I hastened Tubewards 
for Charing Cross and Westminster. 

4 4 Well, there was an unsolicited testimonial 
for you, Baby Beaugard,” said little Miss 
Royds. ‘ 1 What an extraordinary old lady! 
Quite a character, wasn’t she? Do you think 
she was a little mad, or only eccentric?” 

‘ 4 There was something very odd about her,” 
I agreed. “I wonder why she called her nurse 
4 Orpheus’?” 

A more important question than this — and 
to do with the same old lady, was to be forced 
upon me upon the very next day — Oh, what a 
day that was. 

Well, let me go back to the beginning of it 
and to the appearance of Mr. Paul Lancaster, 
looking pale and upset for once, in our room. 

“Miss Beaugard,” he said quietly, “d’you 
mind coming into my room for a few mo- 
ments?” He held open the door for me. “I 
want to speak to you.” 


87 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


I followed him in, wondering why. . . . 

Was it going to be a real “row” this time on 
the subject of my mysterious admirer! Was 
it only now that he had heard of another lot of 
flowers, and some more concert tickets from 
Mr. Paul Wright! 

I pulled myself together, determined that I 
would not be ordered about in this way by this 
young man, who gave himself the airs of an 
elder brother without being any relation at all. 

“Sit down, please, Miss Beaugard,” he said, 
in quite a conciliatory tone of voice. 

I supposed he saw, after all, that I was not 
the milk-and-water sort of young woman who 
can be ordered about, and thought he was going 
to try and “get round me” by coaxing or ca- 
jolery instead. 

Well, I determined that he should find that 
that did not answer either, as I sat down in the 
chair he put for me and faced him. 

I lifted my eyes as determinedly as possible 
to his face, and then I nearly gasped at the 
change I found there. He had turned as white 
as the sheet of paper on his desk. His firm 
88 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 

month was set into quite an unfamiliar line, 
and his clear grey-blue eyes looked fearfully 
troubled and startled and shocked. 

His voice, too, when he spoke, sounded quite 
different from the business-like tone which I 
was accustomed to hear, also from the pleas- 
ant tone he had talked in at that dinner-party 
such ages ago. 

“Miss Beaugard, I am very sorry. I had 
better tell you at once. I have bad news for 
you,” 

“Bad news?” Could he be making all this 
fuss over telling me he thought I was not quite 
up to the work, as his clerk, and that I need 
not come to Frith Chambers any more after 
next week? that being his way of taking it out 
of me for defying his warning about Mr. Paul 
Wright. 

No, it wasn’t that, for in a minute he cleared 
his throat rather harshly, and went on : 

“I am very sorry to say there has been an 
accident” — he cleared his throat again — “to 
some one ” 

I sat up straight, and gave a little gasp. 

89 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


When one has hardly anybody in the world be- 
longing to one one’s mind flies instantly to the 
names of those few who are left. 

In a flash I recognised that misfortune must 
have swooped down on my only “some one,” to 
whom I have often behaved badly, whom I have 
often defied and grumbled at, and yet of whom 
I have been so awfully fond. I never dreamed 
that it would be anything so horrible as some- 
thing happening to him, darling old fellow I 
And I not to know of it ! 

The white-panelled walls of my employer’s 
old-fashioned room seemed to whirl round me 
as I gasped out: 

“An accident to my brother — to Jim!” 

All seemed dark for a minute. Then, through 
the darkness, I heard a very kind voice saying : 

“No, no, there is nothing the matter with 
Jim, nothing at all. Poor little mite, drink 
this ! ’ ’ 

The half of a silver flask clinked against my 
teeth. Some perfectly horrible-tasting stuff 
'burned my mouth, and then I found myself sit- 
ting up against Mr. Lancaster’s shoulder, al- 
90 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 


‘most as if he had been Jim himself, while he 
repeated again : 

“I say, it’s not your brother.” 

4 ‘Oh, then, that’s all right!” I heard myself 
sigh, as I sat erect again. And, mingled with 
my relief, was the oddest feeling of delight 
that Mr. Lancaster had spoken so charmingly, 
and held me so gently. 

I felt perfectly horrid, too, for not caring a 
bit, comparatively, what had happened to poor, 
dear old Great-uncle Joseph. He is my only 
other relative, but then I had only known him 
during the fortnight he had spent down in 
Essex, when he came to see about the Grange 
and arrange about Aunt Susan’s furniture. 

And I really could not be expected to get very 
fond of him in that time, even if we had not 
spent most of it in wrangling about his plans 
for me and about my coming up to earn my 
own living in London. 

So I said gravely but steadily : 

“I suppose it’s my great-uncle, old Mr. Beau- 
gard, who has died?” 

m 


91 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Mr. Lancaster was staring at me as though I 
had been saying the most unexpected things. 

“ I haven’t heard anything about your great- 
uncle!” he said, rather hoarsely. “ Can’t you 
think of some other man? — I — I always say the 
wrong thing! It was somebody who went off 
on a long train journey early this morning.” 

Still, of course, I didn’t know. 

“I suppose he didn’t tell you he was going,” 
said Mr. Lancaster, unsteadily now. 4 4 You see, 
he was travelling North in the express which 
has met with a bad accident. I thought I had 
better tell you this before you see the papers. 
Twenty or thirty passengers were killed when 
she went off the rails, and among the names of 
those who lost their lives was that of Mr. Paul 
Wright.” 

“Mr. Paul Wright?” I echoed stupidly. 

This was indeed the most unexpected yet. 

It left me with absolutely nothing to say. 
And, when I did speak, my voice seemed to 
come mechanically from me in a question that 
was quite involuntary: 

“People sometimes make mistakes about who 
92 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 


has been killed in these accidents. Is it per- 
fectly certain f ” 

“Pm afraid it is only too certain.’ ’ Mr. 
Lancaster’s voice shook. He was not looking 
at me, but at the ivory paper knife which he 
had taken up and was playing with, as he had 
done once before when he had called me in for 
an interview. 

“There is no room for doubt, Miss Beau- 
gard, I’m sorry to say. A card-case, un- 
touched, with his name on the cards, was found 
in an inner pocket of his coat. And he must 
have been killed instantaneously.” 

It seemed as if he could say no more, and I 
sat there, stupidly, wondering about a trifle. 

For it seems to me that when one is faced 
with something much larger than usual in every- 
day life one catches at something trifling, some- 
thing comprehensible, to help one to regain 
one’s balance. 

The trifle that occupied me was wondering 
how soon Mr. Paul Wright would have bought 
that new card-case after losing the one that I 
had picked up that afternoon in the Park. 

93 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“I don’t know what to say to you,” went on 
Mr. Lancaster’s boyish voice, quite miserably. 
“I never was any hand at saying things ” 

(This was entirely true! He never was, 
bless his heart!) 

“Only,” he said, “this has been an awful 
shock and I — I am most fearfully sorry — for 
— for you!” 

What could I say to this? 

This was such a horribly awkward moment 
to have to confess to him that — sorry as I was 
about that railway accident, the name of Mr. 
Paul Wright meant nothing more to me than 
the names of the other passengers who were 
killed, except that I had used it, unscrupulously, 
to fit the personality of a make-believe admirer 
of whom I knew nothing. . . . 

Still, since Mr. Lancaster knew him, I could 
not allow this complication (begun light-heart- 
edly and ignorantly!) to go on for another sec- 
ond. Yes! This was the moment I must end 
it, tell the whole humiliating and absurd story. 

“Mr. Lancaster,” I began, a little out of 

breath, “I must tell you ” 

94 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 

Here the telephone-bell went off sharply and 
peremptorily at his elbow. 

“One moment, Miss Beaugard.” He took 
np the receiver. 

“Yes, this is Mr. Paul Lancaster speaking 
now. ’ ’ 

His voice altered suddenly. 

“Yes, nurse, what is it?” A pause, and then 
hurriedly: “I will come up at once. I will ring 
up a taxi now, and be with her immediately.” 

Then he rang up the stand and gave his ad- 
dress to a driver. 

“May I go now, Mr. Lancaster V 9 

“Yes, child, yes,” said Mr. Lancaster, evi- 
dently not knowing in the least what he was 
saying, or what he was calling me. “You see, 
I have been called up to Hampstead. I shall 
have to go up to — to his grandmother, at once. ’ ’ 

“His grandmother!” Whose? He talked as 
if I knew all about it. 

“And you had better go home, at once if you 
like. There’s my taxi at the door now.” He 
snatched up his hat. “Perhaps you had better 
ring up another cab for yourself ; sorry I can ’t . 9 1 
95 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

But I did not see why I should not take my- 
self back, bewildered and stupefied as I was, to 
the society of the other girls in the typists' 
room. 

When I came in I saw three heads bent to- 
gether over an early afternoon edition of the 
newspaper. A buzz of talk was going on; it 
stopped at once as I entered, and I thought Miss 
Rickards gave a quick, searching glance at me, 
but presently all three of them were looking 
intently somewhere else. 

“Have you got those notes for me to go on 
with?" I said, rather wonderingly, to Miss 
Rickards. 

“I shouldn't bother about them, dear," said 
Miss Rickards, in the kindest tone I had ever 
heard in even her kind voice. “There is time 
enough for those to-morrow, and it will be tea- 
time in a few minutes." 

“I would rather do the notes, really I 
would," I proceeded. Then, as if she felt that 
she had made some mistake, Miss Rickards 
handed me the notes, and talked to me about 
96 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 

them in quite an unnaturally business-like sort 
of way. 

I know now that she thought I was 
‘ 1 stunned . 9 9 

All of them had read the account of the catas- 
trophe to that northward-bound express. 
They’d seen the name. 

In the pause for tea I looked round for the 
evening edition of the Star , containing an ac- 
count of the catastrophe. It was not to be 
found. Later on I discovered that Miss Royds 
had carefully taken it and drawn the fire up 
with it, and, at the risk of a fine from the 
L.C.C., had sent it blazing up the chimney. 

How kind they all were! How desperately 
sorry for me ! How hard they all tried to save 
me further pain ! And ... if they only knew ! 

What troubled me, and made me absent- 
minded and jumpy, was not my sorrow over the 
accident to Mr. Paul Wright — poor old gen- 
tleman! — but the thought of how in the world 
I was going to break the truth to Mr. Paul Lan- 
caster on his return to-morrow. 

All the way home, as I walked back to the 

97 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

Club through the Park where I had found that 
fatal card-case, I was rehearsing the best way 
to put it to Mr. Lancaster. 

“Yes, I know it was desperately silly of me 
to use cards belonging to some one I knew 
nothing about, I know it was dishonest, and act- 
ing a lie ; but I will tell you why it seemed the 
only thing to be done ” 

This was how I thought I would begin. 

How I dreaded it! An “awful time” was 
ahead of me, I knew. 

But 1 never dreamt what sort of awfulness it 
would turn out to he. 

Dinner is early at the Club for those who wish 
it, and after dinner I went out on to the bal- 
cony of one of the sitting-rooms. 

One of the Club-maids came to me. 

“If you please, miss, a gentleman to see 
you.” 

“To see me!” It was the first time this had 
happened since I had been staying at the Club. 
I had a wild thought of my brother Jim unex- 
pectedly landing from Ceylon. 

98 


A COMPLIMENT— AND A CATASTROPHE 

But it was not Jim. It was Mr. Lancaster! 

He stood in the hall, dressed as he had left 
Frith Chambers that afternoon, looking even 
more flurried and agitated. 

“I am sorry to trouble you,’ ’ he said in that 
disturbed voice, “but I had to come. It is a 
matter of life and death for the old lady. She 
is very ill. She is not to be contradicted or 
crossed in any wish that she expresses, and she 
wishes to see you!” 

‘ ‘ Who wishes ?” I cried, gazing up at him. 

“His grandmother,” said my employer, al- 
most impatiently, “old Mrs. Wright. I have a 
taxi waiting outside. Will you get on your 
things and come with me at once, please ? ” 


99 


CHAPTER VIII 


FRESH COMPLICATIONS 

W HAT else could I do? 

If I had been a little older, or even 
a little more sensible, I should have 
begun my explanation then and there, as we 
drove along in that taxi. But, while I was try- 
ing to collect my thoughts, it was Mr. Lancaster 
who spoke, hurriedly, apologetically, all about 
“the pain which he was causing me,” not know- 
ing that pain was scarcely the right word for 
the appalling embarrassment which the whole 
position had brought upon me. Why — why did 
I ever “let myself in” for it? 

“You know that old Mrs. Wright has been 
extremely delicate for a long time,” said Mr. 
Lancaster, quite taking it for granted that I 
knew all about “old Mrs. Wright” as well as 
about other members of the family. I sup- 
100 


FRESH COMPLICATIONS 


posed she must be the white-haired lady I had 
seen once — Mr. Wright’s wife. But I thought 
I would let Mr. Lancaster finish what he had 
to say before I told my own story, which sim- 
ply must be done, I felt, now as we whizzed 
along in the taxi, and before we reached Hamp- 
stead. 

“This last shock has given her a relapse that 
makes her doctor particularly anxious, it seems. 
You know” — he cleared his throat — “you know 
she hadn’t got on with him lately ” 

“With her doctor!” I said, bewildered. 

“No, no; with — with my cousin, poor chap!” 

I felt myself opening my eyes. 

What — who was this fresh character in this 
extraordinary drama! 

“Your cousin, Mr. Lancaster!” I faltered, 
looking up into his harassed face. 

He stared down at me. 

“You didn’t know that Paul Wright was my 
cousin!” 

“No!” I gasped. “I never dreamt of such 
a thing.” 

“Really! You weren’t told — you didn’t even 
101 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


guess, the other afternoon, when he called upon 
me at the office ?” 

“ Called at the office?” I echoed. “When 
was that?” 

* 1 Only yesterday. ’ ’ 

“Yesterday? Then ” 

The amazing fact that was just beginning to 
dawn on me made me speechless for a minute. 

This Mr. Paul Wright was one and the same 
visitor whom we had heard through the door, 
positively shouting at Mr. Lancaster in his 
room, and telling him that he refused to stand 
any of this — our employer’s — “interference”! 

This was the “young madman” who had 
nearly run down Miss Rickards on the stairs. 
No wonder she had noticed he was “something 
like the Governor to look at”! 

I had taken for my “mysterious admirer” 
Mr. Lancaster’s own cousin, who — here was the 
unexpected complication! — who had been not 
an old gentleman at all, but a good-looking 
young man ! 

And I — according to Mr. Lancaster’s view of 
102 


FRESH COMPLICATIONS 

it — was this dead cousin's grief-stricken sweet- 
heart ! 

I was dumb with horror over what this would 
mean. 

How could I begin to explain matters now? 

I suppose the added dread of it must have 
shown in my face. For I saw on Mr. Lancas- 
ter's own boyish face a look of pitying kindness 
that he might have turned on some child who 
had been badly hurt. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Lord, ' ' he muttered unhappily, 1 i I wish 
I knew what to say to you. ... I never was 
any hand at talking to girls, never. I am a 
clumsy fool, I was before, and you must hate 
me for what I said about " 

I interrupted him. “Oh, Mr. Lancaster, 
about that: I must tell you " 

“Forgive me; I've got to tell you something 
first," he said quickly. “I’ve got to sort of 
prepare you. ... It’s about the reason his 
grandmother wants to see you. You see, he 
told her about you." 

“What?" I gasped, frozen with surprise 
103 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

where I sat. 4 ‘Told her? About me? How 
could he, when there was nothing to tell? n 

There ! I thought I had got it out, now. But 
the young man beside me did not seem to un- 
derstand. 

Hurriedly he took up: “I know! That’s it! 
Apparently Paul told her there was nothing. 
She had been telling him off, you know, about 

women Now I’ve done it again. Now I’ve 

said the wrong thing ” 

‘ ‘ Oh, no ! ” I protested. ‘ 1 Say what you like. 
Why should I mind?” 

He looked at me sidewards as the cab whizzed 
along. Then he said, “Well, it appears that 
Paul told her that, whatever he’d done, there 

was one girl in his life who — who Well, he 

said he was nothing to her but a friend ; that he 
had given her flowers and left her alone, and 
that he looked upon her, this one girl, as an 
angel from Heaven; that he wouldn’t harm a 
hair of her head or a feather of her wings. You 
know the way he talked ! One woman, he said, 
whom he’d rather die than treat badly. And 
now he’s dead,” Mr. Lancaster went on very 
104 


FRESH COMPLICATIONS 


hurriedly, 4 ‘now, you see, she, the old lady, re- 
members. She said — it sounds an extraordi- 
nary thing for a woman to say of her own grand- 
son — she said it was the only time she’d ever 
heard of Paul holding his hand where a girl 
was concerned, or of his ever being kind. She 
says she spoilt him, sent him to his ruin, but 
that she ’d feel it a link between him and her, if 
she could see this one girl.” 

He stopped at last, looking appealingly at 
me. 

I said blankly, “What girl!” 

“Don’t you understand!” said Mr. Lancas- 
ter very gently. “She can only mean — you.” 

Me! Horror on horror’s head! Me 

“Oh, this is worse than ever!” I cried des- 
perately, feeling as if I had got into a maze like 
the one at Hampton Court, only one that there 
was no way out of. 

“I cannot see her! Oh, I cannot face her, 
Mr. Lancaster ! Please stop the taxi and let me 
get out. I want to go back — I cannot go on 
like this !” 

I almost felt as if I could jump straight out 
105 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

of the taxi window. But Mr. Lancaster’s firm 
grip on my arm seemed to call me hack to my- 
self. 

“Come!” he said authoritatively. 

I had never been thankful before to hear a 
man speak with authority. 

“Come, you must not give way like this. I 
say, Jim Beaugard’s sister must not be a 
coward.” Fancy his having caught my broth- 
er’s name! “Think! There is a poor old 
woman’s life depending upon whether this one 
wish of hers is to be fulfilled at this crucial mo- 
ment, or not. Be kind to her.” 

He cleared his throat again. 

“Remember, she was very fond of him 
really,” he said. “That’s why you’re going to 
be . . . sweet about it ” 

“Mr. Lancaster,” I gasped, “I cannot pos- 
sibly speak to her — of him!” 

“You need not,” said Mr. Lancaster, again 
with that comforting authority in his voice. “I 
think she will scarcely wish to mention his name 
to you. You have probably heard” — here was 
another of his taking-for-granteds — “that Mrs. 

106 


FRESH COMPLICATIONS 


Wright is a thoroughly unconventional old lady, 
very eccentric in fact. She will not speak to 
you in the least as you think. You may even 
be a little shocked at the way she takes it, lots 
of people are shocked at her ! but, at all events, 
I can promise you she won’t want to distress 
you by talking of him or wishing to enter into 
any details of that sort. She wants to see — to 
see that girl of his ” 

I said desperately, 4 ‘I’m not his girl.” 

“You’re the one he meant. There was no 
one else, I know,” said Mr. Lancaster, simply 
and convinced. “I’m too thankful I ’ve got hold 
of you for her. She wants it so! And you 
can’t refuse her — you wouldn’t want to — 
you’re too kind. You can’t do a poor old 
woman down.” 

No, I felt that I could not. I could only sit 
there and watch the streets fly past as though 
in a dream, bewildered beyond words at the turn 
events were taking. To find myself in the po- 
sition of ‘ ‘ the only creature ’ ’ to whom this dead 
young man had been “kind”! I, who had 
never, never set eyes on him or dreamed of 
107 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


doing so ! And I to be on my way, at this mo- 
ment, to comfort this stranger’s own grand- 
mother ! 

“Surely,” I felt, “I must be going to wake 
up as soon as the taxi stops!” 

But the taxi stopped before that flight of 
white steps and that green door which I had 
seen once before, and I did not wake up. It 
was no dream. 

Unguessed-at realities were before me! 


108 


CHAPTER IX 


A FALSE POSITION 

M R. LANCASTER jumped out, gave me 
his hand to help me, and then put his 
hand firmly under my arm, as if he 
thought I might trip on that flight of whitened 
steps to the green front door out of which Miss 
Royds and I had watched the white-haired old 
Duchess-of-Devonshire lady descending with 
the nurse. 

The same nurse opened the door even before 
Mr. Lancaster had rung. 

“Ah, Mr. Lancaster! You have brought the 
young lady. That’s good!” said the nurse, in 
quiet, professional tones, with a lightning- 
quick, keen glance at me. 

“Why !” she began, a look of recogni- 

tion coming into her eyes. She seemed just 
going to make some remark about having seen 
me before. Then evidently she thought better 
109 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
of it. She turned quickly towards the hall and 
said: 

“Will you please come upstairs ?” 

We both followed her upstairs to a door on a 
landing. The nurse tapped quickly, and, after 
she had closed the door behind her, we heard 
a murmur inside. Then she opened the door 
and beckoned. 

I turned to the young man beside me, feeling 
that I simply could not leave the support of his 
presence. But he shook his head, hesitating. 
“She — she doesn’t want me, Nurse Egerton, of 
course?” 

“No. The young lady alone, please.” 

With one backward glance at my employer, 
which made me feel as if I were leaving behind 
my last contact with real life in the middle of a 
nightmare, I followed the nurse’s mauve and 
white clad figure into the room. 

It was darkened, and, through the one faint 
glimmer of a shrouded light that remained, I 
could only make out a huge mirror that gleamed 
uncannily, and the towering shape of a big, 
old-fashioned four-poster bed, with white cur- 
110 


A FALSE POSITION 


tains, that reminded me of a tomb. From the 
bed came the sound of the imperious old voice 
which I had already listened to once calling : 

4 4 Turn up the light, Orpheus ! Do you think 
I’m a bat or an owl, that you expect me to see 
in this darkness made visible? Turn on all the 
lights, and let me have a good look at the girl 
now she is here!” 

There was a click, then another and another, 
and the big bedroom was flooded with light, 
softly pink from the shades arranged about the 
globes. 

The change made me blink for a moment, 
then I turned towards the bed, and made out 
the face and figure that lay back against the 
large, frilled pillows. 

The old lady, with her clean-cut features and 
piercing grey-blue eyes and almost waxen com- 
plexion, was more striking than she was even 
as I had seen her the other morning. 

Over the aureole of silver hair that framed 
her face there was thrown an exquisite black 
Spanish lace mantilla, which formed an effec- 
tive background to her wonderful old head, and 
111 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


draped her slender, sloping shoulders, and 
wrapped her frail arms down to her hands, 
which were like little white claws crowded with 
magnificent diamonds. 

The stones shot out sparks of emerald and 
orange and scarlet fire as she raised both hands, 
and held them towards me. 

“Why, it’s the little girl we saw that morn- 
ing, Orpheus ! ’ ’ she cried, with a delighted sur- 
prise in her imperious old tones. She looked 
at me, searchingly. “The little girl called 
Morwenna, which means 4 white as sea-foam.’ 
She is very white now, and her big eyes are as 
blue as the sea itself. Yes, she’s a beauty. It 
is the fate of our family to be beauty-worship- 
pers — as I dare say you’ve been told, child,” 
she added to me , i 1 have you not ? ’ ’ 

I heard myself mutter something unintelligi- 
ble, and I turned away, shy of meeting the 
searchlight gaze of those piercing eyes against 
the pillow. 

As I did so I caught a fleeting glimpse of the 
face of Nurse Egerton. It startled me so much 
that I nearly exclaimed aloud. 

112 


A FALSE POSITION 


I had already seen that she was a well-turned- 
ont and nice-looking girl; she could not have 
been more than twenty-four or five. But in 
that moment her face had changed to the face 
of a much older woman. More than that, it 
was the face of a woman distracted with mis- 
ery, and — yes ! anger. Why . . . ? 

In another second I thought I must have 
been mistaken ; I could not have seen that look. 
It must have been my imagination. Nurse 
Egerton, perfectly tranquil now, stepped for- 
ward and said quietly to her patient: “If I 
allow this young lady to stay and talk, you must 
not excite yourself. You know you promised, 
Mrs. Wright !” 

“Hold your tongue, Orpheus !” snapped old 
Mrs. Wright. 

She seemed to hypnotise me. . . . 

How else was it that she persuaded me to 
send for my belongings from the Club, and to 
come and stay with her, there, in that house in 
Well Walk? 

A day later I found myself promising to 
113 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

give up my work for as long as she might need 
me. 

She needed me ! That was the keynote of it 
all. She got hold of me by that absurd pas- 
sion which I always had for giving . I gave 
her pleasure in watching me ; comfort in think- 
ing that I was a link with that lost grandson 
of hers — never mentioned, by the way, by any 
of us. I gave her an interest in the remnant 
of life that remained to her. And, oh, I am 
ashamed of it now, but I simply had not the 
courage to take them away again. 

“Your pretty face and your pretty ways, lit- 
tle Morwenna, are all the amusement I have 
left,” she declared, on the second day. “Don’t 
take them away, child, till I’ve finished being 
able to appreciate them. I shall not keep you 
long, I expect.” 

Again, what could I do? (Oh, I paid for it 
afterwards, for my lack of courage and hon- 
esty!) 

I found myself forced into making her house 
my home. A thousand times rather I would 
have been at Frith Chambers, working with the 
114 


A FALSE POSITION 

“ three R’s” under Mr. Lancaster. But there 
I stayed in the old-fashioned, luxurious house 
that always seemed to me to have the shadow 
of past trouble, of past anger, brooding over it, 
brooding. . . . 

Or perhaps I imagined an unhappy atmos- 
phere, since I was so unhappy in my false po- 
sition ! 

He — Mr. Lancaster — wrote me a short, stiff, 
ill-expressed note, saying that he, as the only 
other member of her family, would be grateful 
if I would stay with his grandmother. (She 
was his grandmother too, I remembered, with 
a little start.) And the trained nurse, looking 
at me with a glance as detached as if I were a 
bottle of tonic instead of another young woman, 
told me she feared “it might have serious con- 
sequences if her patient were crossed in some- 
thing on which she had set her heart.’ ’ 

She added firmly, “serious consequences.” 

“Very well, Nurse Egerton,” I said, “I will 
stay. But ” 

“Orpheus,” called Mrs. Wright from her 
bedroom, “send in my Sunshine, please.” 

115 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

I was her 1 1 Sunshine ’ ’ ! And I had soon 
found out why she called her nurse “ Orpheus/ ’ 
It was because she had the duty of blowing out 
the air-cushions which are piled high behind 
the old lady’s stately Duchess-of-Devonshire- 
like head. And when the nurse is doing this, 
her pretty, puffed-out cheeks did look rather 
as if she were playing some musical instrument. 

“Orpheus, to the life ! ? ? said old Mrs. Wright 
to me, the first time I watched the proceeding. 

I smiled at Nurse Egerton, but she didn’t 
smile back at me. She never smiled at me. I 
should have wondered whether it were one of 
the duties of trained nurses not to smile, but 
that she did smile, often and gently, at her pa- 
tient. 

Evidently she didn’t like me. 

I imagined that it was natural jealousy at 
seeing her patient, whom she had attended de- 
votedly for the last three years, turning from 
her to give all her gratitude, all her affection, to 
a stranger, a mere, unpractical, rather babyish, 
pretty girl. 

“Give me a pretty face to look at, and I don’t 
116 


A FALSE POSITION 


care whether the owner of it has a heart of gold 
or not!” was one of her startling remarks one 
day, when she woke up from her afternoon nap 
to find me bringing in a cup of hot milk for her. 
“Hearts don’t matter, because I don’t see ’em; 
faces I do. And besides,” she added, “I don’t 
believe that any one who hasn’t got an ugly 
disposition can have a really ugly face. So 
don’t preach to me about the inside being bet- 
ter than the outside, because I won’t have it!” 

Then again, she said, ruefully, “But I ought 
to know that handsome looks can be spoiled by 
unhandsome things;” and I guessed, suddenly, 
that she was thinking of the man who was the 
reason for my being there at all. That was 
the only time she had seemed to remember, that, 
and an allusion to “only sons.” She said once 
it was better never to rear a chick or a child 
than to have just one baby and to give him lives 
to play with as one gave him a coral and 
bells. . . . 

“He’s bound to break them,” said the old 
lady. “He did.” 

That was the only time she mentioned “him” 
117 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


— and though the shadow of him and the thought 
of him haunted the house like a ghost, I had no 
idea even of what “he” really looked like — 
until one afternoon. 

It was the cook-housekeeper, wife of the old 
family butler, who enlightened me. 

She had taken a fancy to me from the first, 
because as she says, I “don’t need everlasting 
waiting-on, like most of these young ladies.” 

“Ah, miss, I don’t wonder, if I may say so, 
that you were the only one of the lot that poor 
Mr. Paul really cared for!” This burst from 
her one day when I was downstairs in the Vic- 
torian basement. 

It was the first time I had ever heard him 
mentioned by name. 

“It’s the girls’ afternoon out, and there’s no- 
body about, miss, dear,” cook murmured. “If 
you’ll step in here a minute, I’ll show you some- 
thing. ’ ’ 

And she opened a kitchen drawer, and from 
under a truly cook-like chaos of wooden spoons, 
an “Old Moore’s Almanack,” a clean glass- 
cloth, a polishing pad, and a packet of pear- 
118 


A FALSE POSITION 


drops, she drew forth a cabinet photograph in 
a red-leather frame. 

‘ 4 There, missy,’ ’ she said, fixing her eyes on 
my face while she handed me the photograph, 
“do you know who that is?” 

1 ‘ Oh, yes ! ” I cried readily. ‘ ‘ Isn ’t it good ? 9 9 

For the photograph showed me exactly what 
my employer, Mr. Paul Lancaster, must have 
looked like ten years ago, at twenty-one or twen- 
ty-two. There were his broad, sloping shoul- 
ders — the shoulder that had been so comfort- 
ingly supporting to me when he had broken to 
me what he had thought was very bad news, and 
what I thought must be ill tidings of Jim. 

There were his fair, smooth head, and his 
clear eyes looking very straight out at me. 
There were his firm mouth and chin, only there 
was a more wilful and defiant expression about 
the whole face than I had been accustomed to 
associate with the man who was at the head of 
affairs in Frith Chambers. 

Perhaps that was only because he was so 
much younger when the photograph was taken ! 
119 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“Yes, it’s very like him,” I said, as I handed 
the photograph back again to cook. 

“Oh, miss, dear, won’t you keep it! I meant 
you to have it, if you hadn ’t one like it. ’ ’ 

Why should she imagine that I should pos- 
sess any portrait of the young engineer with 
whom, except about twice, I have never been 
on any but strictly business terms! 

“I think it’s only right that you should have 
it, miss, if you don’t mind accepting it from me. 
Only, miss, whatever you do, don’t let the mis- 
tress see it ! The last time poor Mr. Paul went 
away she burned all the photographs in the 
house that was ever taken of him, even his little 
baby ones, and this is the only one left.” 

“Mr. Paul!” 

It suddenly flashed upon me that she meant 
not my Mr. Lancaster — I mean, not my em- 
ployer, Mr. Lancaster — but the Mr. Paul 
Wright who was his cousin. 

Then, looking closer, I saw that I’d just been 
misled by a very strong family likeness. 

Ah, no, they weren’t really alike, these two 
young men. 


120 


A FALSE POSITION 


How different were their expressions! Mr. 
Lancaster, boyish, honest, straight, sterling, 
kind. . . . Paul Wright, defiant and, yes! 
What they call “a devil” — I have heard girls 
who say they rather like that look. Well, I can 
only say that I never do, and never have. It 
takes all sorts to make a world, as old cook her- 
self once told me, and if there weren’t some of 
his sort, there would not be some of all 
sorts. . . . 

I can only tell you that his “sort” did not 
and never could have appealed to my sort. 

But I couldn’t refuse the photograph. I knew 
that, for as long as I was with her, I mustn’t 
let his grandmother suspect that I hadn’t been 
on the friendliest terms — Oh, dear! — with that 
young man. 

And if she were not to know, nobody in the 
house must ever dream that there had been no 
attentions from that dead young man to me — 
no friendship between us, not even the shadow 
of an acquaintanceship. 

So I thanked cook, and went up the kitchen 
stairs, holding in my hand the framed photo- 
121 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


graph, which I must smuggle away into a drawer 
as soon as possible. 

As I reached the black-and-white tiled hall, I 
found myself confronted — unexpectedly con- 
fronted — by the other man of whom I had just 
been thinking — my late employer, Mr. Paul Lan- 
caster. He had just been let in by Nurse 
Egerton. 

At the sight of me they stopped quickly, and 
I saw the eyes of both of them turn, as if they 
couldn’t help themselves, to what I was carrying 
in my hand. 

I felt myself blush until it hurt! 

This was because I had never before been 
made to feel, so completely, my own false po- 
sition. 

I had begun by telling one fib — then another, 
now everything in my life was made up of fibs 
and falsehoods and prevarications. I was liv- 
ing a sham, and it was the shame of this that 
made my cheeks blaze. 

They couldn’t be expected to put it down to 
anything so out of the way. These two people, 
who knew the Mr. Wright on whom I had never 
122 


A FALSE POSITION 


set eyes — how I wish I had never heard of his 
name ! — these two imagined that I flushed 
merely because I was a girl in love, “ caught 
out” in the act of dreaming over the portrait 
of the man whom she has loved and lost. 

And this, of course, made me blush more furi- 
ously than before! How I hated myself and 
them, and every one else, at that moment ! 


123 


CHAPTER X 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR I 


N URSE EGERTON’S coolly professional 
accents broke what was to me a most 
embarrassingly awkward silence. 

“If yon will wait in the drawing-room for a 
moment, Mr. Lancaster, I will go npstairs and 
see whether Mrs. Wright has finished her nap, 
and if she will be able to receive you for a few 
moments presently.’ ’ 

“Thank you, nurse,” said Mr. Lancaster, and 
I stood aside to let Nurse Egerton precede me. 

Her trim figure, with its mauve print gown, 
its white apron, and the cap which is always 
as fresh and crisp as a camellia petal on her 
chestnut hair, disappeared round the curve of 
the wide staircase, and then I turned to follow 
her, to run to my room and hide that incrimi- 
nating photograph of the stranger whom I had 
124 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR! 


never seen, at the very bottom of my lowest 
drawer. 

But Mr. Lancaster’s voice, speaking as gently 
as he had spoken to me on that fatal afternoon 
in the office before I came to live under false 
pretences in this house, held me back. 

“Miss Beaugard, will you come into the draw- 
ing-room with me for a minute before I go up 
to my grandmother? I have a message to give 
you. ’ 9 

I did as he asked, still clutching the photo- 
graph, which I couldn’t leave on the hall table, 
and which I didn’t know what else to do with. 

I sat down on a low, wide couch, covered with 
a pleasant, faded cretonne, of which the pat- 
tern must have gone out of stock about the 
year of Queen Victoria’s first jubilee. Mr. 
Paul Lancaster sat down close beside me, and 
gave me his message. 

It was from the “three R’s,” delivered to 
him, apparently, by Miss Rickards. It was 
merely to say that my three fellow clerks missed 
me very much, and that they would be glad if, 
some Saturday afternoon, when I was not too 
125 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


busy attending to Mrs. Wright, I would, if I 
cared to, meet them out for tea somewhere. 

That was all; there was nothing in the mes- 
sage that need have been in the least upsetting. 
Yet, quite unexpectedly, it upset me horribly. 
It was the thought of the simple kindness and 
good-heartedness and candour of these girls, 
whom I had deceived. Through meaning to be 
kind to them, what a tangled web I had woven 
for myself! 

I suddenly felt the contrast between the open 
and straightforward affairs of the “ three 
R’s” and the complications and shams in which 
I was involved. I longed to be out of it; I 
longed to be back at work as I was before I had 
hit on the fatally successful ruse of using Mr. 
Wright’s name as the sender of sweets and 
flowers and little luxuries that mattered not at 
all! 

I longed for the routine and companionship in 
Frith Chambers. This house, with its haunted 
atmosphere of the old unhappiness and unex- 
plained wrongs, weighed on my nerves as a 
nightmare weighs on one’s chest. 

126 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR! 


I felt a kind of horror of everything here — 
of the beautiful, proud, miserable old face of 
Mrs. Wright upstairs — of the coldly profes- 
sional manner of Nurse Egerton, who so jeal- 
ously resented my unwilling intrusion . . . 

I was puzzled, bewildered. I felt like a child 
who had lost its way. I felt that I should have 
been happier anywhere else — even in that 
4 4 quiet country rectory,’ ’ the very thought of 
which had been such a bugbear to me. 

All these depressing thoughts seemed to 
sweep over me in a great wave of misery, carry- 
ing me off my feet in the very moment that Mr. 
Lancaster stopped giving me his message. 

And, to my horror, I found myself doing 
something that I had never for a moment an- 
ticipated doing. 

I flung up my hands with a gesture of uncon- 
trollable despair; I cried desperately, “No, this 
is too much for me! I can’t bear it!” 

And then I buried my face in my hands, and 
let my head sink into the old-fashioned cush- 
ions, as I gave way to tears and sobs that simply 
wouldn’t be denied. 


127 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


A sudden horrible feeling of being so alone, 
so utterly alone in the world, mingled with 
everything else, and as I sobbed, I put out, 
blindly, one of my hands. I felt I must have a 
human hand to cling to. It would have been 
the same to me if it had been Nurse Egerton’s, 
or the doctor’s, or even old cook’s; but pres- 
ently I felt my fingers folded in a firm, strong 
clasp that was comfort unutterable. 

“I am so unhappy — so unhappy !” I mur- 
mured, half into the cushion. And the hand 
still held mine, while I heard Mr. Lancaster’s 
voice, infinitely pitying and gentle, respond : 

“I know! I know, dear!” 

(“Dear!”) 

That one word seemed to go through me 
like the touch of an electric wire. 

I had read before in books of how a word, 
a touch, had worked miracles, but I had always 
imagined it to be romantic nonsense — an ex- 
aggeration for the benefit of idiotically senti- 
mental novel-readers like the Miss Settles, in 
their “ quiet country rectory” at home. 

But now I kntfw it to be literally true. That 
128 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR! 

touch of Mr. Lancaster’s hand, that one word 
of endearment, so utterly gentle, even though 
it was spoken only out of pity for a girl whom 
he imagined to be sobbing her heart out over 
the loss of his dead cousin — these things had 
worked the miracle — the miracle of revealing 
me to myself. 

I saw new meanings in a dozen things which 
I had misconstrued ever since I had gone to 
work in Frith Chambers. 

I knew now why I was so angry that Mr. 
Paul Lancaster in business found it expedient 
to be a person so totally different from the same 
young man at a dinner-party. I knew why I 
had had that shock of delight when he had once 
more spoken in a friendly manner to me, and 
had held me so gently when I nearly fainted 
over the shock of fearing that something had 
happened to Jim. 

I knew why those agonising blushes had 
burned my cheeks just now when he had come 
upon me with his cousin’s photograph in my 
hand. 

It was not entirely the misery and embarrass- 
129 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


ment of my false position in this house that 
made the days seem so long and the nights so 
restless. 

No, it was something much stranger still. It 
was the fact that I, who have never given my- 
self up to day-dreams and fancies about love, 
should have been for all these weeks, and with- 
out realising it, in love myself. 

Some girls come to that knowledge gradually 
r — step by step, seeing their way, and smiling 
as they come. But I had come upon it in one 
terrifying moment. I felt as if I had fallen 
backwards into the swimming bath at the deep 
end. 

I gasped as the truth flashed upon me. In 
love / 

Yes, I was in love — had been in love since that 
first evening — with this other Paul ! 

And still Paul Lancaster sat beside me, ut- 
terly disturbed in the kindness of his heart over 
something that didn’t happen to be my trouble 
at all. 

He was stroking my hand as gently as any 
woman could have done, and he was murmur- 
130 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR! 


ing soothingly, comfortingly, “I know, dear, I 
know ! ’ 9 

He — who didn’t know anything! To be call- 
ing me “dear” in that tone of an elder brother! 

Surely that brotherly sort of kindness must 
always be the last straw to a woman who has 
just found out that what she feels towards the 
speaker is the very reverse of mere “sisterli- 
ness”? 

Anyhow, it was more than I could bear. 

1 ‘ Don ’t ! ” I cried, in a choked voice. ‘ ‘ Please, 
you must never call me that ! 9 9 

Silence for a moment, then I heard Mr. Lan- 
caster’s voice say, falteringly: 

“I am sorry, I never will again! I always 
do the wrong things — always ” 

Another misunderstanding ! He thought that 
Paul Wright had been the only man whom I 
could ever allow to call me “dear.” 

“But please believe me,” he went on — still 
in that brotherly tone — “that if there were any- 
thing in the world that I could do to comfort 
you I would do it.” 

“Oh, I know you would!” I said, with rather 
131 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


an unsteady laugh. Comfort? It was a com- 
fort to me that such a man lived. Others might 
think him “awkward.’ ’ Others might say he 
did the wrong thing. But it was never 
“wrong” for me. For me he was right. Yes, 
he was, always, exactly right for me. 

He had slackened that comforting clasp of 
his hand. 

I drew my own away. I fumbled for my 
handkerchief in the cuff of my black satin shirt, 
blew my nose, dried my eyes, and pulled myself 
together to reply. 

“Thank you so much, Mr. Lancaster. And 
do please forgive me for having been so very 
silly to-day. I am not often like this.” (In- 
deed, I have never been like it before in my 
life.) “And as for Miss Rickards and the 
other girls, will you please thank them very 
much for their kind messages, and tell them 
that I am writing to them to-night, and ” 

“Mr. Lancaster, if you don’t mind waiting, 
Mrs. Wright will see you a little later this after- 
noon,” broke in the cool tones of Nurse Eger- 
ton, who had entered softly, and stood there, 
132 


A NEW FACTOR IN THE AFFAIR! 


looking very self-possessed and trim, and mak- 
ing me feel more dishevelled than I had ever 
done before. 

“Miss Beangard, if you don’t mind, she 
would like you to go up to her now.” 

“Oh, yes, I’ll go at once!” I said, glad of 
the excuse, and I ran out of the room and up 
the stairs. 


133 


CHAPTER XI 


ABOUT PEARLS — AND TEARS 

U PSTAIRS in the big bedroom, I found 
rather a disconcerting change in my old 
lady’s manner. 

She was sitting up in her black mantilla, 
much more upright than usual. There was a 
flush on the ivory of her cheeks ; the dominant 
grey-blue eyes were brilliant. 

Never since I had seen her had she looked so 
far from being ill. 

She began, as she often did, by telling me 
to “come nearer, so that she could look well at 
the prettiest thing in the house.” 

(I often wished she would not say that before 
the chestnut-haired nurse, whom many people 
would think prettier than I am!) 

But generally I did not mind obeying her and 
standing to let her stare at my eyes and my 
short thick curly hair and at the contrast be- 
134 


ABOUT PEARLS— AND TEARS 

tween my absurdly white skin and my black 
frock. 

That afternoon, however, I faced those keen 
old eyes of hers very reluctantly. 

I knew she would notice. She did. 

“You have been crying, Morwenna,” she said 
quickly. “'Why!” 

I said appealingly, “Must you ask me?” 

“You needn’t answer me, child,” she said 
gently; “but it puzzles me for all that. You 
have not cried before, since you have been stay- 
ing here in this — in my house.” 

“No,” I said. It was quite true that, up to 
now, since I came here to occupy this extraor- 
dinary position of seeming to be the sweet- 
heart of a dead man whom I had never met I 
had not shed a tear. 

“Then why now?” asked the old lady curi- 
ously, speaking more to herself than to me. “Is 
it that you have only just realised something?” 

I nodded. 

For this was bitterly true, indeed! It was 
only now that I realised what a revolution had 
135 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
been happening in my feelings during the last 
weeks. 

“Strange,” said old Mrs. Wright, peering at 
me with her wonderful eyes. “I see a look on 
your face, now, Morwenna, that I have waited 
for all these weeks, and still had never seen 
before — the look of a woman who can love.” 

“Oh, it shows, then!” I murmured unhap- 
pily, and I covered my face with my hands and 
turned away. 

“Don’t hide your face from me, child,” said 
old Mrs. Wright gently. “I shan’t have much 
longer to look at it.” 

“Oh, how can you say that?” I began unhap- 
pily. “You know you are so much better than 
you have been.” 

“I believe I am better for seeing that look in 
your eyes, child,” said the old lady. “It’s a 
comfort to me to know that in all his wild and 
reckless life, the life I helped to make so, my 
grandson did gain the affection of one innocent 
girl, and kept it innocently.” 

‘ ‘ Please don ’t !” I choked. 4 ‘ Please — I can ’t 
bear to hear you say that now.” 

136 


ABOUT PEARLS— AND TEARS 


For my heart and eyes and ears seemed full 
still of the image — not, not of the dead Paul 
(as she imagined!) but of the living one down- 
stairs. 

“Sometimes it happens like this, I know,” 
said the old grandmother, musingly. “A bird’s 
wings never look as white as when it flies. And 
love, sometimes, is a slow fuse that breaks into 
flame long after the hand that set it has disap- 
peared. Tell me, child. You did not really 
care, then, for our boy while he was alive?” 

“No,” I said truthfully enough, and waited, 
holding my breath, for the next question, which 
I felt must needs be answered with a lie. 

But she said nothing further. Instead she 
said: 

“Ring the bell for Orpheus.” 

I rang, and Nurse Egerton appeared. 

“Is my — is Mr. Lancaster downstairs still, 
Orpheus?” 

I noticed that she never called him “my 
grandson.” I don’t think she ever cared for 
him. Hearts are so different. 

137 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“Yes, he is waiting for those papers you 
wished him to take to the bank.” 

“Tell him to come upstairs here at once.” 

The nurse hesitated, with a glance at her pa- 
tient. 

“Do as I tell you, Orpheus, or you’ll go, and 
give place to a nurse who will,” flamed out old 
Mrs. Wright. And the nurse, without a flicker 
of annoyance through her professional mask, 
slipped out of the room. 

I was going to follow her. I didn’t, oh! I 
didn’t want to see him again to-day, but old 
Mrs. Wright stopped me. 

“You shall go in a minute, child. Wait until 
they come up, because Orpheus has something 
I want for you.” 

In another moment the nurse had come back, 
and I saw the tall bulk of Mr. Lancaster dark- 
ening the late afternoon light which filtered 
through the casement, but I could not look at 
him. 

Mrs. Wright turned to her nurse. 

“Orpheus, find the key of my sandal- wood 
138 


ABOUT PEARLS — AND TEARS 

box. . . . Good. Now bring the box here to 
me. Thank you / 9 

She opened the heavy, square casket of 
fragrant wood, carved and bordered with 
mother-of-pearl. 

What a curious hoarding-place — what a still 
more curious hoard! 

It was full of treasures mingled higgledy- 
piggledy. A cairngorm brooch, tasteless, huge, 
and hideous, had wound round and round its 
long pin strands of the most marvellous pink, 
spiky coraL There were little boxes , their 
leather lids open and gaping over their empty, 
cream satin-lined shells, there was a handful 
of rings, one or two with diamonds as good as 
those which Mrs. Wright wore always on her 
white and claw-like fingers, other mourning 
rings, plaits of hair, some pinchbeck trifles, and 
a collection of cameos, set and unset. 

There were earrings of every sort, too, long 
tortoiseshell drop ones, with fairy-like gold in- 
lay, amethyst studs, one pair of large silver 
ones, each as big as a pendant. 

And, wound in and out of this extraordinary 
139 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

tangle of gems and rubbish (inextricably mixed, 
like the good and bad qualities in a human 
heart!) there was a pearl necklace. A necklace 
of many strands, and of graduated pearls, from 
the great front pearl that seemed almost as 
large as a wren's egg, to the wee pearls along 
the end, which seemed no bigger than the 4 ‘hun- 
dreds and thousands ' ' on a christening cake. 

“I want to see Morwenna put that necklace 
on,” said old Mrs. Wright's distinct and com- 
manding tone from her pillows, and she held 
the wonderful milky gleaming strands out to 
me. 

Obediently I took it, but my hands were shak- 
ing, and I could not snap the curiously wrought 
silver old-fashioned clasp. 

“Fasten it for her!'' said old Mrs. Wright. 

I saw Mr. Paul Lancaster make a little move- 
ment as if he would do this. My heart seemed 
to lift. It flashed across me that I would love 
to let him fasten a necklace for me, tie a shoe- 
string, put a wrap about me. Anything that 
would bring him near me for a second, just 
then. . . . 


140 


ABOUT PEARLS— AND TEARS 


But lie checked himself. 

Drearily I realised — or thought I realised — 
why. He thought that I, who had forbidden 
him to use a term of endearment to me — his 
cousin’s sweetheart, as he imagined — would not 
like him to come even as near to me as fasten- 
ing a necklace. 

It was Nurse Egerton who stepped forward 
and snapped the old-fashioned clasp. 

The touch of her fingers against my neck was 
professionally light ; in fact, she could not have 
been more gentle. 

But, even so, how that touch betrayed her. 

Just as love can break through its disguise of 
rough handling, so can hate appear in the touch 
that is nothing but gentle. 

In some subtle, unexplained way, that touch 
of Nurse Egerton’s fingers on my neck allowed 
me to realise how utterly she detested me. 

I had tried to he nice to her, always : it was 
not my fault! Just because a poor old lady 
had taken a fancy to me, as sick people are 
always understood to take fancies ! 

But the quiet, mask-like face of the nurse 
141 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


seemed to send out rays of hatred towards me, 
even as a lamp sends out rays of light, as I 
stood there, wearing those stranger-pearls. 

“Difficult to tell which is the whiter, the old 
necklace or the child’s young throat ,’ 9 said Mrs. 
Wright. Then turning to her grandson she 
added, sharply, “Isn’t that so?” 

“It — it suits her very well,” he said quietly, 
“I think.” 

I felt his eyes on me as if the pearls had been 
suddenly molten into a burning circle round my 
throat. 

I put my hand up to unclasp them. 

“Keep them on!” commanded Mrs. Wright. 
“I wish to see them there. But, for a little, 
you can go now, child. You two stop; I shan’t 
keep you long. Kiss me before you go, Mor- 
wenna. ’ ’ 

And I bent down and kissed the flushed ivory 
of her cheek before I slipped out of the room. 

I went back to the empty drawing-room and 
sat on the sofa, where I had broken into such 
hopeless sobbing half an hour before. 

Tears are twice as bitter when their cause is 
142 


ABOUT PEARLS— AND TEARS 

misunderstood, and would Mr. Lancaster ever 
understand why it was that I had broken down 
just then and there f I did not even know 
whether to wish that he should or should not. 

I think . . . that he should . . . 

For it came hack to me, all that the 4 6 three 
R’s” had said of his looking at me, liking me. 
Supposing that wonderful thing were true? 
Too good, too good . . . 

But I lost myself in a day-dream over it. I 
don’t know how many minutes it was before I 
came out of it, to find myself in the drawing- 
room that was almost dark, but for the light of 
the lamp outside in Well Walk. 

A shiver of loneliness went through me. 

I stole out of the drawing-room into the hall, 
and there I met Mr. Lancaster, coming down 
noiselessly, but in a hurry. 

“Oh!” I said quickly, but not knowing quite 
what to ask him. “Is Nurse Egerton still with 
Mrs. Wright?” 

Without answering he took my hand, led me 
back into the drawing-room, shut the door, and 
turned up just one of the lights, the one by the 
143 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


piano. I saw that his face was white and drawn 
and serious. 

“ I say ” he began softly. “I’m sorry to 

say something — another shock for yon ” 

Even as he said it, I knew what had hap- 
pened. 

“Mrs. Wright!” I whispered. “She is — 
dead?” 

He nodded. 

“She died about ten minutes ago, very 
quietly. She lay back just as she had finished 
speaking to us, and she was gone in a second,” 
he told me. There was silence for a moment. 
Presently he added, “Now, what do you wish 
to do ? Shall I take you back to that Club where 
you were staying before, or will you stay here 
with the nurse to-night?” 

The nurse! I felt a childish terror of being 
left alone with this strange young woman who 
hated me so. I faltered something about being 
better away, being no longer of any use in Mrs. 
Wright’s house. 

Mr. Lancaster looked down at me again 
144 


ABOUT PEARLS— AND TEARS 

quickly, with an odd, half -wondering, half-pity- 
ing expression on his face. 

“Perhaps,” he began — “perhaps it will save 
time and complications if I tell you something 
at once.” 

“About her!” I interposed quickly and softly. 

“About my grandmother, yes, and you. ‘Her 
house,’ you said,” he added. “I may tell you, 
Miss Beaugard, that this is now — your house.” 

“What can you mean!” I stared at him. 

“I mean,” he said, “that just before my 
grandmother died she drew up another will, 
which Nurse Egerton and I signed as witnesses, 
and in it she left this house and everything here 
— all her property, all she possessed — to you!” 


145 


CHAPTER XII 


A CLASH OF WILLS 

I MUST skip some time in my story now, 
hardly knowing myself whether that time 
runs to days or weeks ; a time packed with 
bewilderment and complexity to a brand-new 
heiress. 

An heiress — yes, that was what I found my- 
self. 

It was I who was supposed to take over the 
management of that great house, and to pay off 
the nurse, and to settle about whether the serv- 
ants were to stay on, and to interview the most 
alarming-looking, legal gentlemen, with noses 
like hawks’ beaks and eyes that seemed to go 
through you, bringing stacks of papers about 
goodness knows what in the way of business 
and settlements and shares, which I, and nobody 
else, was supposed to sign! 

146 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


Bewildered, stunned, reluctant, but still Mrs. 
Wright’s heiress . . . ! 

And why? Because I had been brought to 
brighten up her last days with . . . my own 
false pretences. 

I suppose nine girls out of ten would have 
found courage then and there to confess the 
whole of that absurd yet disastrous story. 

But I can only tell you, with shame, that this 
courage was not mine. 

Only one very definite resolve I did make, and 
intended to keep. 

I blurted it out to Mr. Lancaster in that draw- 
ing-room of the Well Walk house, where he was 
waiting with me for an interview with one of 
those legal, hawk-people. 

I looked straight at the young man — a thing 
I did not often do, lest he might discover how 
difficult it was for me to look at anything else 
while he was in the room, and I exclaimed, “I 
won ’t ! I won ’t do this ! ’ ’ 

He opened those honest grey-blue eyes of his. 
I went on very quickly. 

“ I mean I won’t have anything more to do 
147 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


with all this; it’s no use any of them bringing 
any more papers for me to sign. And I am not 
going to have anything to do with arrangements 
about the house or the furniture, or the jew- 
ellery, or the plate, or anything that’s here! 
I don’t consider it mine, and I refuse to look 
upon it as such.” 

“But, Miss Beaugard, it is indubitably 
yours,” said Mr. Lancaster, in that calmly rea- 
soning voice which men will still go on using 
to women who disagree with them, although I 
should have thought that all these centuries 
might have taught them that it’s no earthly 
good. 

“You see,” he went on, “it is the only will 
that old Mrs. Wright made since the loss of her 
grandson. It is perfectly correctly drawn up, 
and correctly witnessed by Nurse Egerton and 
myself.” 

“You!” I blurted out. “But it’s you who 
ought to have it!” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mr. Lan- 
caster looking at me. 

“You do!” I contradicted. “You are her 
148 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


only remaining relative, aren’t you? Every- 
thing would have gone naturally to you, even 
if no will had been found — if I hadn’t been 
there.” 

“Still, you were there!” said Mr. Lancaster, 
in that horribly reasonable tone, which there is 
no contradicting, “and, as a matter of fact, 
there are reasons why, even if the money had 
not been specifically left away from me, I should 
not have cared to touch it.” 

“I am sure I don’t care to touch it,” I went 
on, looking quite angrily at him across the 
width of the drawing-room. 

He was standing on the hearthrug with his 
back to the fire, and I was sitting on the chintz 
sofa, where I had flung myself that other after- 
noon. 

“It was only because she was so very ill, and 
took strange fancies into her head that she hit 
upon this sudden idea of leaving everything 
that ought to have been her grandson’s to a 
perfect stranger, who was nothing to her,” I 
said. 

“Nothing to her?” said Mr. Lancaster 
149 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


quickly, and looking away* from me. “You 
know she considered you as almost a daugh- 
ter.^ 

“That doesn’t make it any less impossible 
for me to take her fortune. I can’t do it; I 
won’t! There’s only one thing of hers, which, 
for a reason of my own, I would wish to keep.” 

“What is that?” asked Mr. Lancaster 
quickly; but before I could answer him, “Mr. 
Griffin” was announced. 

(Mr. Griffin being the very hawkiest of the 
lawyer people.) 

With Mr. Griffin there, looking more like a 
bird of prey than any one could possibly have 
expected of a human being who wore beauti- 
fully-creased trousers and gold-rimmed eye- 
glasses, there ensued the longest and most ex- 
hausting argument in which I had ever taken 
part. The wordy wrangles with my great-uncle 
about whether I was to be allowed to come up 
and try to earn my living in London were as 
nothing to it ! 

It was all, of course, about that wretched will. 

“I don’t wish to accept the terms of it; I 
150 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


won’t take the money. I wish to retire in fa- 
vour of Mr. Lancaster.” 

This was what I heard myself saying, over 
and over again, in answer to Mr. Lancaster’s 
puzzled, curt remonstrances, and in spite of 
Mr. Griffin’s polished and suave and thoroughly 
logical arguments. 

Neither of these two men seemed ever to 
have heard of that eternal verity : 

“A woman urged against her will 
Is of the same opinion still.” 

And to neither of them could I possibly ex- 
plain the whole truth of my refusal; it would 
sound too grotesque, too incredible. 

Little coward and idiot that I was, I could 
not confess that “Mr. Wright” story to Mr. 
Lancaster; not now when I knew who it was 
that I cared for all the time. Strange and in- 
consistent as it sounds, that was the bar. 

I could only go on repeating obstinately, “I 
am not going to touch that money. ’ ’ 

“Nor am I,” said Mr. Lancaster, more 
quietly, but, as I saw, with equal obstinacy. 

151 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“Then a fortune goes begging,” said Mr. 
Griffin, the lawyer, with a sort of humorous 
gleam in his eye that seemed to tell me it 
wouldn’t go begging very long if he had the 
shadow of a claim to put into it. “Here we 
come to a standstill, then? Well, I can only 
suggest that Miss Beaugard will probably re- 
gret her decision, and that she had better take 
a little more time to think it over.” 

“I have thought about it until my head 
aches ! ” I said indignantly, ‘ ‘ and there is only 
one thing that I can agree to doing — that is, to 
refuse it absolutely. There is only one of all 
Mrs. Wright’s things, as I said just now, which 
I would like to be allowed to look on as mine 
to do what I like with. ’ ’ 

“What is that?” asked Mr. Paul Lancaster 
quickly. 

I put my hand up to my throat and drew out 
from under the black collar of my blouse the 
only ornament which I have worn for weeks. 

It was the beautiful pearl necklace which old 
Mrs. Wright had brought out of her jewel-cas- 
ket on that last afternoon when I had seen her, 
152 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


which she had made me try on, and the clasp of 
which Nurse Egerton had fastened round my 
neck. 

I had worn it there ever since, partly because 
I didn’t want, in putting it back into Mrs. 
Wright’s jewel-casket, to touch any of the old 
lady’s things — a kind of superstitious dread 
kept me from this. 

Again, I didn’t know into what other hands 
I could safely entrust the pearls now that Nurse 
Egerton had left, and thirdly, I didn’t feel it 
was safe to leave them in my little bedroom 
which I have got hack to at the Club ; so I have 
always worn them round my neck. 

“I should like to keep these,” I said again. 

“They are yours, anyhow,” said Mr. Paul 
Lancaster gently. “When my grandmother 
gave them to you that afternoon, she meant 
them as a present.” 

“It’s all that I shall accept, then,” I said 
defiantly, ‘ ‘ and now there seems nothing really 
for me to stay for.” 

The two men looked at each other, and 
shrugged their shoulders in a sort of resigned 
153 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


despair, still thinking, I know, of other reason- 
able arguments which would so easily convince 
this unreasonable young woman if she could 
only be got to listen to them, only, of course, she 
can’t. They might just as well have taken a 
razor to cut through a log. 

I walked to the door, and Mr. Lancaster 
opened it for me, coming out into the hall. 

“You are running away, you know,” he told 
me quite gently, “from responsibilities.” 

“They are yours,” I said firmly. “I leave 
them to you. ’ 9 

. “A woman can’t take the law into her own 
hands, and dispense it how she likes,” he ar- 
gued. 

“Then it is a great pity she can’t!” I said 
obstinately. “Perhaps soon, when the stupid 
old laws are not all made by men, she will be 
able to. Anyhow, I am making a beginning.” 

He smiled a little at this, and for a moment 
we stood there in the old-fashioned hall behind 
the red and green and yellow glazing of the 
heavy front door. 

Neither of us seemed to know what we were 
154 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


waiting for. Still we waited. “And what else 
do you intend to do?” he asked me gravely, at 
last. “Do you mind telling me?” 

I hesitated for a minute. Then out it came, 
something I had wanted to say for a long time. 

“Mr. Lancaster! Let — let me come hack to 
you . 9 ’ 

“To me?” he repeated, and I saw the oddest 
expression cross that fair boyish face. I think 
he coloured deeply — but I was afraid it was 
only the reflection of the stained glass. “To 
me?" 

“Yes, to work for you, with the others, at 
Frith Chambers. I must work, and I liked 
that work, and Miss Eodney said I was getting 

on so well ” I spoke urgently, for he was 

beginning slowly to shake his head. 

What? Wouldn’t he let me come back? 
Oh, it was so little that I asked! Just to be 
under the same roof with him during the hours 
of the business day! Just to have the chance of 
seeing him once during that day, even if it were 
to be given orders in that most aloof voice of 
his ! Just not to lose everything of him ! 

155 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“ Please let me come,” I said, trying to keep 
my voice steady. 

He looked troubled. “But — ! You see 
there’s no earthly need for you to work, any- 
where !” 

“We have had all this out in there,” I said, 
with an impatient glance towards the drawing- 
room door, behind which I expect that beaky- 
nosed lawyer was appraising all the wonder- 
ful old china and cameos and silver in the cabi- 
nets, and wondering what extraordinary make 
of human beings they could be who each refused 
to turn things so obviously valuable into cash 
for themselves. 

“We have argued it all out, ’ ’ I repeated, ‘ 6 and 
I have told you that I refuse to live on — on 
money like that. I have a little of my own,” 
I said ruefully, remembering how it was that 
unfortunate four pounds a week that differenti- 
ated me from the “three R’s,” gave me the 
power of making them presents, and finally 
landed me into this complication of the wrong 
Mr. Right, of his grandmother’s will, and of 
the fortune which I could not touch. 

156 


A CLASH OF WILLS 


‘ ‘ I will work well, Mr. Lancaster, oh, I prom- 
ise you! You will never again have to find 
fault with me, as you did before ” 

“Don’t!” muttered Paul Lancaster. Then 
he said, “Well, and supposing you didn’t come 
back to Frith Chambers, where would you go ? ” 

“ Somewhere else. Not here, I mean. I’d go 
back to the City, I suppose, and tramp about 
from office to office until I found somebody who 
thought I’d do.” 

“Good Lord, no! I say you mustn’t do 
that,” &e declared, almost violently. “No! — 
Look here,” he added, slowly, reluctantly, “per- 
haps you had better come to me — to Frith 
Chambers. For the present, I mean, of course.” 

My heart gave a great thump of relief, but I 
only said quietly : 

‘ ‘ Thank you. Shall I begin again on Monday 
next?” 

“If you feel that it is necessary ” 

“I do. Thank you.” 

I turned to the front door. 

He held it open for me. 

157 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“Are you going back to your Club now, Miss 
Beaugard?” 

I wondered if be thought of seeing me back 
to that Club. . . . 

But I told him no, I had to pay a visit to the 
nurses’ hostel where Nurse Egerton stayed. I 
had something I wished to say to her. 

Then I said good-bye to him and went off. 
Above all my other feelings was one of happi- 
ness because, whatever happened, I was going 
on working with him still ! 

Yes; I was “as far gone” as that. . . . 


I 


158 


CHAPTER XIII 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 

I REACHED the door of the nurses ’ hostel. 
Yes, Nurse Egerton was in, if I would step 
into the sitting-room. 

I stepped into a pleasant-looking room, with 
pretty furniture and pictures, and plenty of 
frivolous-looking fashion-papers about on the 
table, and a piano with tango-music and the 
score of the latest musical comedy put up on it. 

I suppose, that if hospital nurses were not 
frivolous about everything that has not actually 
got to do with their work, that work would get 
the better of them, and make them too de- 
pressed, too solemn and important-feeling to go 
on living like ordinary girls. Ordinary girls 
can take things light-heartedly or not, as they 
choose, the hospital nurse has to learn to keep 
light-hearted. 

A pretty, matronly-looking woman in blue 
159 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


alpaca, with a little frill to her cap, looked in 
for a minute, and said : 

“Oh, you wish to see one of our nurses V 9 

Then, when I mentioned Miss Egerton’s 
name, replied: 

“Yes, she has just come in from reporting 
herself to one of the doctors/ ’ 

A moment after she disappeared ; and Nurse 
Egerton, in her immaculate uniform, and with 
that flower petal of a little cap just resting on 
her chestnut hair, stood before me. 

“Good-afternoon, Miss Beaugard,” she said, 
civilly, but without offering to shake hands. 
She never had shaken hands with me, not all 
the time that we were living together in the 
Well Walk house and having our meals d deux 
in that dignified old dining-room. 

Again I felt positively timid before this young 
nurse, who, however capable she may be, cannot 
be more than five or six years older than I am. 

And then I determined that it was silly of 
me to let her make me feel nervous — even to 
make me feel as if there must be some good rea- 
son why she disliked me so. 

160 


TWO KINDS OF GIKLS 


Perhaps it was only a misunderstanding : and, 
perhaps, when she knew why I had come, she 
would alter her feelings. 

I had made up, some time ago, a little plan 
about her. I hoped, I thought, that it would 
touch her ; in her place, I know, I should have 
thought it “nice” of another girl. 

So I began, taking my courage in both hands. 

“I have been wanting to see you for some 
time . 9 ’ 

“Oh, yes. Won’t you sit down?” said Nurse 
Egerton politely. 

And I sat down on a chair beside the table; 
but she wouldn’t sit down. She stood, erect and 
trim, with the table between us — as if her own 
manner were not barricade enough. 

I went on quickly. 

“It’s about something of old Mrs. Wright’s 
which I wanted you to have in remembrance 
of her.” 

I saw her take a movement backwards, then 
she said briskly : 

“Oh, it is very kind of you, Miss Beaugard, 
but I couldn’t dream of taking anything else! 

161 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


My legacy was already much more generous 
than I could have expected.’ ’ 

“But a legacy is only money,” I said, depre- 
eatingly, because, really, I am beginning to look 
upon mere money and what it involves as a 
fairly definite curse. “I wanted you, who did 
so much more for her than I ever did, to accept 
something personal, something which had really 
belonged to her.” 

“Thank you, Miss Beaugard, but that’s 
really quite unnecessary.” 

Her tone was final. But, already, I had put 
aside the black fur ruffle at my throat. I un- 
snapped an old-fashioned silver clasp; and I 
drew it out, the memento that I wanted Mrs. 
Wright’s nurse to take — the pearl necklace. 

They gleamed, those milky, graduated 
strands! gleamed like a ray of moonlight as I 
held them out. As gently, as appealingly, as I 
could, I said to the young woman who was star- 
ing from them to me: “Here is what I want 
you to have. Please !” 

She just stared. 


162 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


“Please !” I said again. “I should so 

like it, if you would take these.” 

“The pearls ?” said Nurse Egerton in the 
most frozen voice I’d heard, even from her. 
“His grandmother’s pearls?” 

“Yes ” 

“What must you think of me,” she said, icily, 
“to offer those — to me?” 

I felt chilled all over by her tone. 

I faltered. “You won’t take them?” 

“Did you, for one instant, imagine that I 
should?” 

I looked at her. 

Oh, dear . . . was this to be another well- 
meant offer repulsed? Was I fated to go 
through life longing to give things to people, 
and always having my gifts returned with the 
very reverse of thanks? 

It had begun with “Mac” and her stockings 
at that business-college. 

It had gone on with the “three R’s” at West- 
minster, who couldn’t be induced to accept a 
few flowers or sweets from me in my own per- 


son. 


163 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Later, there was Paul Lancaster, who would 
not allow me to give back to him what was his 
own by right. 

Now, to crown all, here was Nurse Egerton, 
with indignant offence beginning to flame 
through the mask of her cold civility, refusing 
to touch the jewels that I held out to her. 

I faltered, “Why — why won’t you?” She 
opened her mouth as if to say something. Then 
she gave a hard little laugh instead. Then she 
asked me, 4 ‘ Have you any idea of their value ? ’ ’ 
“I — I don’t see what that has to do with it.” 
“Well, Miss Beaugard, perhaps I do. Let 
us say, if you like, that I should not care to be 
under such an obligation to a stranger. 

And ” she pressed her lips together before 

she said it — ‘ ‘ thank you for thinking of it. ’ ’ 
Even then I didn’t see what I had done. Oh, 
if Paul Lancaster always said and did the wrong 
thing, it was certainly a quality that we shared 
in common. Surely he had never been as 
clumsy as I was that afternoon, in my attempt 
to be friendly and tactful ! 

I did not even see that I ought to go now, 
164 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


and leave the girl whose feelings I had hurt. I 
was too hurt myself, I suppose. 

But that afternoon I was feeling extra miser- 
able and lonely, tired after that exhausting ar- 
gument with those two men, hungry for af- 
fection. 

Anyhow, it suddenly came upon me all at 
once that I couldn’t bear this thinly-disguised 
dislike of another woman any longer, that I 
must come to some understanding with her — 
break down this barrier. 

I dropped the disputed pearls down on the 
table between us, and held out my hands to the 
other girl. I said to her earnestly: 

c ‘ Why won’t you let me be friends with 
you?” 

“Friends? oh. . . . It is very good of you to 
wish it ” 

“Ah, don’t speak to me like that,” I begged. 
“I am not happy! I can’t bear it if you sneer 
at me ” 

But her face never softened. 

“Why must you look at me like that?” I 
urged. “Why did you take a dislike to me 
165 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

the first minute I came into Mrs. Wright’s 
house ?” 

She raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. 
I went on: “Why need we be unfriendly? We 
are both girls. We both seem to be alone in 
the world. We’ve lived in the same house, the 
same sort of life. We’ve both been fond of 
the same person, haven’t we? so ” 

Here I stopped abruptly, for over Nurse 
Egerton’s pretty, shut, contemptuous face 
there had come a sudden change. 

She drew a step back and retorted curtly: 

6 ‘ Then you did know, and you pretended you 
didn’t.” 

“Pretended I didn’t know what?” 

“Why I could never be friends with you. 
You knew all the time,” and the hatred in her 
voice was now quite undisguised. 

“If you mean,” I said, rather bewildered, 
“that I guessed you might mind a little that 
Mrs. Wright should take that unaccountable 
fancy to me, when it was you who did everything 
for her, and who were so much longer with 
her ” 


166 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


And then again I stopped, for again the 
nurse’s face had changed, she turned sharply 
aside, but not before I had caught sight of the 
wave of scarlet that had swept irresistibly up 
to the roots of her chestnut hair. 

Then I knew. I knew what she meant and 
had meant all along. My own, newly-realised 
feeling for Paul Lancaster helped me to this 
other girl’s feelings. 

She had cared for the other Paid! 

It was not on account of poor old Mrs. Wright 
that she was jealous of me; no, it was because 
of the wild, good-for-nothing grandson who had 
been killed in that railway accident, and who 
had (as she imagined, to add to the general 
complication) cared for me! 

“Oh — ” I gasped. 

What could I do to comfort this girl who had 
lost him — though not in the sense that she 
thought? what could I say to make it right? 

“My dear — my dear!” I cried impulsively, 
compassionately, and I sprang up, came round 
the table, and would have taken her hands, but 
167 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

that she edged away from me as if the touch 
would hurt her. 

“You misunderstood me just now,” I cried, 
“when I said that we had both cared for the 
same person. I meant his grandmother, I 
didn’t mean him. Listen. I will tell you the 
truth. ’ ’ 

And I blurted it out — the only thing that I 
thought could be of any comfort to her at all: 

“7 never cared for him!” 

Oh, if 'I’d known! This was certainly my 
second wrong thing, of all the well-meaning 
wrong things I’d ever done, or said! I could 
not have voiced anything more unfortunately, 
no, not if I’d tried to hurt and offend, instead 
of trying to comfort. 

Nurse Egerton turned upon me the face of 
a fury. “You didn’t care?” she cried. “How 
dared you not?” 

In the mirror over the mantelpiece of that 
commonplace, cheerful, pleasant little room I 
caught sight of our two figures confronting one 
another in what looked like a regular duel of 
feelings unmasked. 


168 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


The young nurse, her trim figure drawn up 
defiantly erect in its mauve-and- white uniform, 
her face passionate, distracted, and furiously 
resentful ; her eyes flashing hatred at the other 
girl, who, dressed all in black, lifted a small 
pale, frightened face from its dark furs to look 
at her appealingly. 

Between us, on the table, lay the gleaming 
strings of pearls which might well stand for the 
many tears which the pair of us had shed, or 
must presently shed, for one reason or the other. 
But meanwhile Nurse Egerton had found her 
tongue, and was using it. 

“ You didn’t care? you didn’t think him ‘good 
enough,’ I suppose, ‘for the love of a good 
woman’ — oh, how I despise ‘good’ people,” she 
flamed out. ‘ ‘ It simply means that they know, 
feel and understand nothing about people who 
are alive! You were ‘shocked’ at him, I dare 
say! You thought him a black sheep, a bad 
lot ” 

“No, no,” I began, but she raged on. 

“He was spoilt and idolised and brought up 
to think he could do as he liked; why shouldn’t 
169 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


lie do it? He was only ‘bad* because it was in 
him to be so much more something than all 
these people who go on being nothing (and 
good) day in, day out. Nobody asks them to 

be anything else ! But Paul ! Women flung 

themselves at his head. I’ve seen them look at 
him — every kind of woman — from the smart 
Society woman to the shabbiest little waitress- 
girl — they only asked to be allowed to spoil him, 
all of them ” 

She paused for breath. I thought the only 
thing would be to get in my story, here. I 
began, falteringly, “But, Nurse Egerton, I 
didn’t ” 

“You!” she broke out contemptuously, “I 
know your kind. The girl who doesn’t give a 
man a gentle look until she’s certain of getting 
a bargain. The ‘good’ girl who metes out every 
word, hedges herself round with primness and 
propriety and gets men to think that she, who 
is just stingy! is worth more than a woman 
who, because she loves, is generous. (I don’t 
understand why men don’t see that.) You 
never loved him ” 


170 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


“I know, but ” 

‘ 4 There was more good in one of his failings, 
though, than in all the virtues of a prig like 
his cousin !” 

4 4 No, stop!” I said, angrily now. I was not 
going to hear a word against Paul Lancaster. 
But this girl who’d loved that other Paul did 
not seem able to hear anything at all. 

44 I hate you all, you cold-blooded prigs,” she 
cried quite wildly, her breast heaving under her 
starchy apron-bib. 44 I simply look down on 
these straight and sterling and constant and 
perfect characters you make so much of. You 
needn’t think it’s sour grapes,” she protested, 
while I could only gasp at the extraordinary 
change in her now that she had dropped the 
guarding professional mask. This was the real 
Nurse Egerton! She declared, laughing dis- 
dainfully, “I’ve been loved by the sterling and 
the straight! And what was it? Always a 
worry and a weariness; always like riding on 
a flat tyre ! A ‘sterling’ lover ought to be kept 
for the girls like you, Miss Beaugard, sweet in- 
nocent girls with no ideas or power of love! 
171 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


But he ! My lost darling. . . . ’ ’ Her voice 

changed suddenly. 4 ‘No one understood him 
as I did. He was beginning to see it. He 
would soon have known that I was his mate, 

made for him. Only ” Here a great sob 

seemed to tear its way out of the other girl’s 
very heart as she went on in that tone of con- 
centrated jealous rage: “Only then he must 
have met you* with your soft voice and your kit- 
tenish face and your blue eyes with nothing be- 
hind them — and you took him from me!” 

“I didn’t ” 

“You did! And why? Not because you 
cared — you admit it ! Not because he swept you 
off your feet and because you felt you had to 
have him if it meant murdering half a dozen 
other women! No!” her voice rose angrily. 
“But because you knew there would be 
money ” 

In my turn I cried, 4 4 How dare you ? ’ ’ 

She took no notice. “You’ve got it now,” 
she cried contemptuously. “You’ve got all 
you wanted, and I wish you joy of it!” 

“Stop!” I said again, and this time so an- 
172 


TWO KINDS OF GIRLS 


grily that she really did stop and seem about to 
listen. I meant to give her something to listen 
to. She should hear the whole truth, now. I 
felt myself boiling with anger at what she 
thought of me already — that came first. 

“To begin with,” I said, heatedly, “I’d like 
to tell you that I am not going to touch a penny 
of that money as long as I live. Because ” 

At that moment the door of the nurses’ sit- 
ting-room opened again, and in bustled the 
matron. 

“Nurse Egerton,” she said quickly. “Dr. 
Harvey has just ’phoned up for you. You will 
have to be off to that case at once, please. Not 
a minute to lose.” 

And the chestnut-haired girl, once more the 
trained nurse, and nothing else, flew, without 
another look at either of us, out of the room. 

The matron explained to me that the case was 
away in the country and would mean weeks. I 
left my address, asking to be told when Nurse 
Egerton returned. 

I had thought of writing to her the story 
which had been interrupted, but thought better 
173 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

of that. What, put that grotesque story down 
in cold blood, colder pen-and-ink! No, I’d wait 
until the girl who’d loved Paul Wright re- 
turned, and then I would make another appoint- 
ment to see her. 

I was glad that at least she’d heard enough 
to know I wasn’t going to touch a penny of my 
inherited ‘ 1 fortune.” 

How little I guessed that after all I was fated 
to break that resolution and (in spite of all I’d 
said about the fortune) to accept it! 


174 


/ 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 

I T was one of the “ three R’s,” curiously 
enough, who settled the question. 

Yes, I had been back at work for nearly 
a month — the daily routine of work that seemed, 
somehow, much gloomier than it used to do in 
the days when I didn’t know who “Mr. Wright” 
was, and before I guessed how much too fond 
I was growing of Mr. Lancaster. 

That young man had shown no further in- 
terest in the girl who’d robbed him and who 
wished to restore what she had unwillingly 
robbed. A distant “Good morning” was al- 
most all I ever heard of his voice. The sight 
of his fair head and big boy’s figure against the 
white panelling, once a day, was the only break 
in life’s monotony. 

Then came the break with a vengeance. 
Catastrophe ! in the shape of a big Bank smash, 
175 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

the failure of “The Celtic and Borderland.’ ’ 

It was the Bank that had held all my money. 
My four pounds a week had gone. . . . 

Curiously enough, this did not seem to mat- 
ter to me at all. Not much deprivation to me, 
to live on my tiny salary now that I had “cut 
down” my chief luxury: giving ! A good store 
of clothes I had, — furs and frocks more than a 
business-girl needs — before I came to London. 
. . . During the whole of the evening after I’d 
heard of the smash I did not realise anything 
but a sort of dull relief that I was a business- 
girl like any other, now: without the wretched 
“private means” that had been the start of all 
my troubles. Money! I hated the word. . . ., 

But it was when I came to the office next 
morning that I realised ! 

Miss Rodney, the fair-haired “R” who lived 
with her invalid sister in a small house in Put- 
ney, turned up looking as white as a sheet, with 
black rings round the eyes that evidently had 
not slept all night. 

Presently I learnt why. She had been really 
“hit” by the colossal Bank smash. 

176 


THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 

All the money that the Rodneys possessed, 
barring the slender salary which my Miss Rod- 
ney earned at Frith Chambers — all the tiny cap- 
ital of which the interest paid the doctor’s hills 
for the sister, and the rent, and the extra milk, 
and the maid that had to be there to attend to 
one sister while the other was out working — 
all the necessities of life, everything was lost to 
them. 

The other two “R’s” and I were dumb with 
sympathy; those other two knowing only too 
well, from their own poor little histories, what 
it meant to have the wolf at the door. 

I didn’t “know.” But I could guess. . * . 
And suddenly I resented it bitterly, the loss of 
my own capital. I could have used it now. 
They would have accepted help from me; oh, 
surely ! 

I resented it more as the week went by that 
had meant ruin for thousands. 

Bit by bit the pitiful tale came from Miss 
Rodney. The house sold up, the maid dis- 
missed, the poor little invalid sister moved into 
cheap lodgings — everything sold that had any 
177 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


value whatsoever, even to the very beautiful 
Cosway miniature of some Rodney ancestress. 

“We are at our last gasp,” I heard poor Miss 
Rodney confide one afternoon, in a despairing 
whisper to Miss Rickards. 

She wouldn’t have said it to me, whom she 
imagined in the same sort of trouble, and also 
fretting my hardest over Mr. Paul Wright. She 
wouldn’t have said it, either, to Miss Royds, 
who had already tried to help her by taking 
the invalid sister for week-ends into her own 
over-crowded home. 

“And what we shall do at the end of this 
month,” she added, “Heaven only knows!” 

“You will get more work,” Miss Rickards 
fried to comfort her. “You’re sure to get an- 
other post. Mr. Lancaster’s very kind, in spite 
of that stand-offish manner, which doesn’t seem 
to see what has been happening here. He’ll 
give you a good recommendation.” 

I looked up. Poor Miss Rodney! I won- 
dered why in the world she should be losing her 
job just now! I said softly: 

“I didn’t know you were leaving.” 

178 


THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 

They all looked at me. 

“My dear, have you forgotten ?” said Miss 
Rickards. “All our jobs at this place come to 
an end at the end of this month. The indexing 
and proof-reading will be finished before then, 
and the place shut up. We shall all have to 
look out for something else to do.” 

“ Oh ! ” I gasped. I felt as if I had been walk- 
ing down a lane so long that it really had no 
turning, and as if, quite suddenly, a blank wall 
had erected itself without a word of warning 
in front of me. 

An end of the work here? This place shut 
up? Work elsewhere? 

All this to me, meant one thing only. Even 
the brief, starved little bit of comfort of seeing 
Mr. Lancaster just once a day was going to be 
taken away from me. 

I should never see him again ! 

I sat there stupefied, staring at the old-fash- 
ioned carved mantelpiece with the big crock 
which had held the flowJfe that I used to have 
sent in to me with Mr. Paul Wright’s card at- 
179 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
tached. I felt as if this were the end of the 
world. 

I must certainly be the most miserable person 
in that world. 

Then my eyes fell upon the misery in little 
Miss Rodney’s face, and I was furious with 
myself for my selfishness. 

For my unhappiness of being in love was not 
all unhappiness. There were moments when 
just to have felt it, and to have known what 
it was like to meet another human being whose 
smile could have made sunshine all over the 
world for you, even if it didn’t. Yes, there 
were moments when I felt that this was worth it. 

But for Miss Rodney, who had to see the only 
relative she had left in the world suffering, 
doing without things, there was no compen- 
sation. 

If I could have helped ! 

If I could have taken my private means, and 
have made them of some good in the world at 
last 

And then another thought seemed to open 
full blown in my mind. 

180 


THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 

Not help her? Not with that great legacy 
going begging! Not with that house? Those 
many bedrooms? That comfortable furniture? 
The means to pay for any luxuries an invalid 
might need? 

There she was, weak for want of proper nour- 
ishing food, cold, because fuel is so much a scut- 
tle. And there was I, with all my scruples. 
Would it be wrong to throw them overboard? 
Wasn’t it the only right thing to do? 

In less than five minutes I had made up my 
mind about that. And at the end of the after- 
noon, I presented myself before Mr. Lancaster 
in his room, to tell him what I had decided to do. 


181 


CHAPTER XV 


a woman’s privilege 

T HAVE changed my mind. I’ve thought 
better of refusing to accept Mrs. 
Wright’s legacy. I think — I think I am 
going to take it after all, Mr. Lancaster.” 

There! It was out. What would he say, I 
wondered, as I stood at his desk feeling more 
than silly, but mutinous still. 

What he said, very quietly, 

“I am very glad to hear it.” 

As for what he feels — well! How can one 
tell that of a man who keeps his eyes as ex- 
pressionless as two grey glass marbles in a 
slab of a face! (Dar ling! all the same.) 

There was no more to be said. But I tum- 
bled with excuses. 

1 i They ought — everything ought to be yours. 
You needn’t think I don’t still think so,” I said, 
182 


A WOMAN’S PRIVILEGE 


defensively. “But you won’t take the house 
— you won’t touch the money ” 

“No,” said Mr. Lancaster, and his tone 
added, “not if you asked me for a hundred 
years.” 

Well, of course I had said all that sort of 
thing myself. And, I can tell you, it was not 
easy to think of having to “climb down” about 
the affair, and to eat all my words, and to face 
the smile of that very hawky-nosed lawyer, the 
one who had listened to what I had to say that 
afternoon, when I insisted that if Mr. Lancaster 
would not take what was his by rights, it could, 
as far as I was concerned, go begging for ever. 

The same hawk-nosed lawyer, with whom I 
had to go through more of that endless busi- 
ness of document-signing and interviewing, was 
certainly very trying with his one or two re- 
marks about its being “a lady’s privilege to 
change her mind.” 

He would have been more trying still, I ex- 
pect if Mr. Lancaster hadn’t very kindly come 
with me, and been there all the time that I was 
183 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
getting through that hateful, that revolting 
business. 

“ And now about letting or selling the Hamp- 
stead house,” he began. 

I said quickly: 

“I don’t want to let or sell it; I want to go 
and live there again at once.” 

i ‘ You want to live there?” echoed Mr. Paul 
Lancaster, staring at me across the very legal- 
looking office as though he thought I had taken 
leave of my senses. “To live there alone?” 

“No, I hope not,” I said. “I shall have a 
companion. In fact two companions.” 

The brilliant plan about the Rodneys, the 
plan responsible for my whole change of face, 
I did not say anything about. 

Only, I began to arrange for it. I — feeling 
about fifty-three! — advertised for servants to 
keep up as it ought to be kept the solidly com- 
fortable old house. 

The old cook, who was there when I went to 
stay with Mrs. Wright, had departed, with her 
pension, to a cottage in the country. I en- 
184 


A WOMAN'S PRIVILEGE 


gaged a woman who came to me with testimo- 
nials from a countess — (oh, how terrified I was 
of her — not of the countess, but the cook!) with 
her husband, who looked as if he'd stepped 
straight out of a drawing in Punch , to act as 
my butler and general factotum. 

I, Morwenna Beaugard, with a live butler of 
my own! It seems too weird. Still, there he 
was. And there were the parlourmaid and the 
housemaid, and the German boy (yes ! think of 
it, te&ermcm), for the boots and knives, all call- 
inline “madam" with the greatest (outward) 
respect, and all going to be paid wages by my 
— that is, it is Mr. Lancaster's really — but as 
far as they are concerned, my money ! 

There was plenty of it, too; enough to buy 
poor Miss Rodney all the comforts and coals 
she'll need for a million years. Oh, how gor- 
geous it was to be able to give , once more ! 

At the office I broke it to them in the 
brusquest way. It was at tea-time. I said to 
Miss Rodney: 

“I'm leaving this place, you know, a week 
before the month is up." 

185 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


It was, as a matter of fact, agony to me to 
do this. It meant that I was to cut short, by 
six whole days, the time I might still be with 
Mr. Lancaster. 

(Still, as he knew that I was moving into 
the Well Walk house, what excuse could I offer 
to him that I should continue to work at Frith 
Chambers — I, a young woman of means again ? 
I wasn’t indispensable to him either in my 
work — or any other capacity. 

So he had accepted my notice gravely and 
politely, without putting any further questions 
about what I was going to do.) 

“And I want you and your sister,” I went on 
to Miss Rodney, “to come and stay with me 
at once, for a nice long visit at my home.” 

“Home?” said poor Miss Rodney, with a 
light coming into her eyes that just showed me 
how uncomfortable poor Miss Grizel, the sis- 
ter, must have been in lodgings. Then she said, 
“I thought you lived at the Fortieth Century 
Club, Baby Beaugard?” 

“I used to. But I’ve come in for a home of 
my own now, and I’ve got to have a companion 
186 


A WOMAN'S PRIVILEGE 


or a chaperon or something in it. So — I do so 
wish you’d both come and stay there, while 
I’m looking round for a suitable person?” 

Of course she didn’t guess that I never in- 
tended to find anybody more “suitable” to liv- 
ing there than herself and sister ! 

But for a moment I had doubts. . . . Would 
she accept? Would it be the usual refusal 
that I’d get? 

No. For herself she might have had “too 
much proper pride” to “inflict” herself or 
something idiotic of that sort. But the invalid 
sister settled it. She thanked me, almost with 
tears, as she accepted the invitation — “for a 
short visit,” she said. 

She asked where this new home of mine was. 
I gave her the address. 

Little Miss Royds burst out : 

“Why, isn’t that where we went that after- 
noon when ” 

Then she checked herself, evidently wishing 
that she had bitten her tongue out rather than 
risk distressing me by reminding me of that 
fatal afternoon. 


187 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

I dare say she was rather surprised at me, 
because I said composedly : 

“Yes, you remember the house we passed 
that day when we met that old lady and her 
nurse? That was Mrs. Wright. That was her 
house, and she has left it to me.” 

Tableau! 


188 


CHAPTER XVI 


A LADY OF MEANS AND MOODS 

F ROM what I saw of her while she was 
alive, I am sure old Mrs. Wright pos- 
sessed a strong sense of humour. 

So that if she could have looked on from the 
Spirit-world and watched the girl whom she 
used to call her “ Sunshine,’ ’ during the next 
few months of my story, I don’t think she could 
have helped laughing at the spectacle! 

I zig-zagged from one mood to another, in 
those days of being a householder of means ! 

At one moment it was delight. Pure delight 
to have Miss Rodney and her gentle invalid sis- 
ter — who looked just exactly like a stray starved 
kitten that has been taken into “the warm” and 
comforted with feeds of cream — safely and hap- 
pily settled under a roof from which no brokers 
and bills can dislodge them. 

They imagined, the dears, that they were 
189 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

there on a visit. They didn’t know that their 
“ visit” was my only excuse for being there, 
and that I intended it to last as long as I did ! 

But then there was my mood of desperate 
misery, desperate shame. For I was there un- 
der false pretences, even if for a good object, 
and I did feel it. . . . 

Why did I ‘ ‘ ever practise to deceive ’ ’ f Why, 
a thousand times, did I ever start this tangle 
by picking up and using that ill-starred card- 
case and that name I wish I’d never heard? I 
meant it to stop there! This other has been 
forced upon me 

Then came a mood of 1 i Well, it was not all 
regrettable. I cheered up that poor old lady’s 
last days by my fraud !” 

Then, “ Surely I pay for all I get, by all I 
suffer ! I do mind being a base little humbug ! 
I do atone by . . . never seeing the only man 
I could ever care for!” 

Further, there was an alarming mood of 
“How will this end? For it can’t last. These 
things never do! Murder will out. And so 
will robbery, and so will taking a man’s name 
190 


A LADY OF MEANS— AND MOODS 


in vain! Somehow, somehow I shall be found 
out. I was too much of a coward to own up 
about that ‘Mr. Wright’ story before. And 
now I simply can’t. But it may come out in 
spite of me. And then what shall I do V ’ 

Again I sometimes thought of nothing but my 
terror of the Bawlinsons, to whom I had to give 
orders, realising all the time that they looked 
upon me just as a rather tiresome baby-lunatic ! 

At other times, reaction set in, and I was 
swayed by a mood of gayest bravado. 

What did anything matter! Stupid people! 
Stodgy old house! I skipped about it hum- 
ming snatches of musical comedy tunes — (just 
fancy, there were no revues, even in those days, 
as yet!) I moved the furniture about and 
changed the look of all the rooms; and once, 
yes! I remember the afternoon when I flew to 
answer the bell myself, nearly falling over 
Franz, my Prussian menial, in the hall. 

(If that young man took up as much room 
in a trench as he did in a room, I can imagine 
the trial he must have been later on!) 

I opened the door to an enormous assortment 
191 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
of large hat-boxes, which I had just ordered up 
on approval from Cherisette’s in Bond Street. 
Then hack I dashed, with two fashionable and 
feathery creations on my head and one in each 
hand, into the drawing-room, to show them off 
to Miss Grizel Rodney, who was lying peace- 
fully on the big chintz couch. 

“ What d’you think of this tango-coloured tur- 
ban with the black osprey?” I demanded, twirl- 
ing it round my finger. “ Price eight guineas 
only ! Or do you prefer this impertinent look- 
ing little three-cornered velvet affair with the 
cockade? It looks rather like a highwayman’s 
hat. So I’d better buy it. Don’t you think so? 
Because” — here I broke into nervous uncon- 
trolled giggling — “I sometimes feel such a lot 
of sympathy with — with highwaymen, and rob- 
bers !” 

“I think you are a foolish child to let your- 
self go into these mad high spirits,” said gentle 
Miss Grizel, quite anxiously. “You are what 
Scots people call 4 fey.’ Take care this gaiety 
doesn’t give way to the very opposite of merri- 
192 


A LADY OF MEANS— AND MOODS 

ment presently, Baby Beaugard ! As they say 
to children, ‘it’ll end in a cry’!” 

“Pooh! Why should it? I don’t believe in 
allowing oneself to be anything but gay. And 
I’ve no reason to be anything else,” I told her. 

“Here I am,” I went on, “able to do just 
whatever I like — to order hats by the dozen, 
to have dear, nice, kind people like you to stay 
with me in my own — my very own — house ! To 
go where I like, say what I like, know whom I 
choose, to take no notice of any one else — not 
of any one! You know I’ve got a brother who 
would try and put a stop to that sort of thing 
if he were here. Only he ’s in Ceylon, and I take 
pretty good care that he doesn’t have any very 
clear idea of what his only sister really does 
now she’s in London on her own!” 

I paused for breath, and went on : 

“Then there’s another young man who might 
try and dictate to me about what I ought and 
ought not to do. He did try once. But it 
wasn’t any good. I don’t believe in people act- 
ing as brothers to one when they’re no relation 
at all, really. Do you?” 

193 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

1 ‘Perhaps,’ ’ suggested Miss Grizel Rodney, 
hesitatingly, “this young man did it because—* 
because he cared more than a brother.” 

“Not he! Oh, not he! He only interfered 
for love of interfering, and because he was a 
prig and a prude and a layer-down of the 
law,” I declared, feeling a sort of perverse re- 
lief in abusing Mr. Paul Lancaster, even though 
she didn’t know I was talking about him. 

‘ ‘ However, I don ’t see him now, ’ ’ 1 said , 1 i and 
I never shall again. I’m my own mistress 
nowadays, and mistress of a house without even 
having to bother to get married for it! Isn’t 
that fortunate? Don’t you think I’m a very 
lucky girl? I don’t believe you do, entirely. 
But I am — I am!” I said, and gave gentle Miss 
Grizel a big hug to emphasise my words. 

Then I tossed the hats on to the top of the 
grand piano, and went and sat down again on 
the big white bearskin rug in front of that blaz- 
ing fire. 

“One must amuse oneself,” I rattled on. 
“By and by one will be too old and embittered 

— like poor old Mrs. Wright ” 

194 


A LADY OF MEANS— AND MOODS 

“My dear — ” 

“And then one will be sorry,” I pursued, 
drumming with my high heels against the rug, 
“that one didn’t get the very utmost out of 
one’s youth while it lasted!” 

4 4 My dear child ’ 9 

44 So I ’m going to ! D ’you know, a plan about 
that has just occurred to me ! ” I cried. 4 4 And if 
you promise not to shake your head over me, 
and call me 4 fey’ any more, I’ll tell you what 
it is !” 

And I did. 

Presently the other Miss Eodney came home 
from her new job in the newspaper office which 
she goes to now that Frith Chambers is all 
closed up, and found me sitting on the end of 
her sister’s couch, very busy with a pencil and 
a large slip of paper. 

4 4 What have you there?” she asked, smiling. 

I said pompously, 44 A list of names.” 

“Names of whom?” 

4 4 Of all the guests to the dinner-party,” I 
told her, 4 4 to be given on Valentine’s day.” 

4 4 Dinner-party?” she repeated, opening her 
195 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

blue eyes. ‘ ‘ Whose party, my dear, and 
where ?” 

“Here, of course!” I laughed gaily. “And 
mine! I’m having my house-warming, I beg 
to announce, next week. Oh, it is going to be 
such fun! After all these grey days, hurrah 
for a dash of rose-colour! You’ll just see what 
a real, regular lark it’s going to be!” 

Why did nothing warn me how that “lark” 
would turn out? 


i 


196 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE HOUSE- WAKMING 

(i f | \HAT’S what’s the matter with this 
house,” I told myself. “It wants par- 
ties. It wants people, new people to 
drive away the unhappy memories of the old; 
lots of people!” 

But for my first dinner I thought I’d only 
seat ten — five ladies and five men. 

For the girls there were, of course, my col- 
leagues, the “three R’s,” myself, and Miss 
Grizel Rodney — who was looking much prettier, 
and much less like an invalid since she’d been 
taken in and cherished by — yes, I may as well 
say it — a houserobber ! 

For the men — to start with, there was Miss 
Rickards’ fiance, the music-master, who’d got 
a job in London now, instead of Dublin. 

Then there were those brothers of Miss 
197 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Royds’s, the two boys she was always talking 
about. They seemed to be very lively — that 
was good! (“Frank sings comic songs, and 
Charlie does imitations.”) So there were our 
entertainers. That was three. 

Four? Well, it seemed rather silly to ask 
him after I came to London to avoid him ! But 
what about Great-uncle Joseph’s idea of “a Mr. 
Right” for me — what about Georgie Settle? I 
heard he’d come down from Oxford, and that 
he was in London at the Bar. . . . 

I always detested him, but I knew he’d never 
cease to admire me — and what equals an obvi- 
ous admirer ( not a “Mr. Wright!”) for giv- 
ing a girl moral support? 

And a hostess of twenty-two (looking seven- 
teen!) giving a dinner-party in a “poached” 
house, and using exquisite old silver and fairy- 
like cut-glass and a priceless Wedgwood serv- 
ice all of which ought to belong to the man she’d 
poached the house from — well, all I can tell 
you is she needed all the moral support she 
could raise ! 

But now the fifth man! 

198 


THE HOUSE-WARMING 


“I don’t know anybody else in London,” I 
said, looking at the Rodneys with my pencil 
poised above the list in my hand. “We must 
have some other man, to make it even. Who 
shall it be?” 

I saw those two girls exchange quick glances. 
I saw my Miss Rodney raise her eyebrows at 
the other one, as much as to say : * 1 Shall I sug- 
gest it?” 

Miss Grizel shook her head in an easily-rec- 
ognised “Better not.” Then my Miss Rodney 
said demurely, “I don’t know at all, dear — 
can’t think of any one.” 

“Yes, you can — you do!” I said. “I saw 
you were both thinking of somebody then. Who 
was it?” 

They both smiled, caught out. I saw the 
youngest Miss Rodney flush a little in the warm 
light of the fire, which I always kept blazing 
half-way up the wide chimney — another extrava- 
gance to which I have no earthly right. 

“Come,” I said, “who have you been dis- 
cussing?” 

My Miss Rodney said: “Well, if you must 
199 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
know, we think you might ask Mr. Paul Lan- 
caster.’ ’ 

I turned away. 

I said: “He wouldn’t come.” 

“Wouldn’t he!” said Miss Rodney, in a tone 
that delighted me again; but it was ridiculous 
to be delighted — I knew that. 

I said, more obstinately, “I’m sure he 
wouldn’t come. Anyhow, I am not going to ask 
him.” 

I didn’t. I wrote a cool little note to 
Georgie Settle (who had accepted my invita- 
tion by ecstatic telegram) to ask him if he could 
bring a man. 

He wired: “Collins was at Magdalen with 
me; overjoyed to come to your dinner .” 

So, I thought, there was our party complete 
without dragging in the man who ought to be 
the master of the house. 

And for this one evening I meant to forget 
all about him. I would forget everything ex- 
cept that I was young and pretty and rich 
enough to do what I liked — and that what I 
200 


THE HOUSE-WARMING 


liked was to give ten young people a thoroughly 
good time. 

The dinner part of it I decided to leave to 
the Rawlinsons, telling them that everything 
had better be exactly as the Countess used to 
have it. At times, by the way, I had found Her 
Ladyship a great trial to live up to. But she 
was useful, this time, u though I must say,” I 
told Miss Grizel, “I am a little surprised at 
the enormous quantities of champagne and old 
Scotch whisky that she seems always to have 
had!” 

On the other hand, I didn’t think that there 
were nearly enough sweets, or crystallised vio- 
lets, or ice-puddings, so I revised that part, 
thereby, I know, dropping another peg in the 
estimation of the Countess’s ex-butler and his 
wife. Nevermind! 

As for flowers, the house was soon a perfect 
bower of them — growing azaleas in pots, masses 
of hothouse roses, and huge bowls full of nar- 
cissi and lilies of the valley. The whole place 
was transformed, as if it were a fairy-tale, and 
201 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

the two younger servants, the housemaid and 
parlourmaid, flew about it, all smiles. 

Even Franz, the German boots and knives 
boy, with whom I always had fearful trouble 
because he quarrelled about international poli- 
tics with everybody else in the house — even he 
seemed to be in less Prussian mood. He even 
took it as a joke when the parlourmaid, who 
was only eighteen, even if she did stand five 
feet eleven, tore down a large coloured litho- 
graph of the Kaiser which he had pinned up 
over the scullery sink, and stamped upon it. 

Yes, a sort of ball-room atmosphere of de- 
lighted anticipation permeated the whole house 
— on that fatal day! 

And our gowns ? I insisted on buying frocks 
for every one of the “ three R’s.” I have told 
them that unless they allow this, all is over be- 
tween us — “not only that, but that I shall be 
very miserable, and I know they don’t want to 
make me any more miserable than I am 
now. . . 

It was hardly fair to use this as a weapon, 
for, of course, they all immediately thought of 
202 


THE HOUSE-WARMING 


1 1 poor young Mr. Wright,’ ’ and put my grief 
down to his account, and they daren’t refuse! 

So they all had lovely frocks, and the invalid 
Miss Rodney a green-grey teagown which, as 
they all said, was enough to make anybody want 
to be not very strong, and be able to wear it. 

As for me, what should I wear? I decided 
to leave off my black, my “fall-of-soot-on-a- 
fall-of-snow” effect. I can wear black when 
I’m old Mrs. Wright’s age. I decided to burst 
forth into colours, and, for my gay evening, to 
choose a gay dress. 

Oh, it was a daring little creation, I thought ! 
Yellow as sunshine; crinkly and corollaed as an 
Iceland poppy, and cut low off my shoulders so 
that at first I thought I must sew in a chiffon 
ruche or something. 

Then I thought I wouldn’t! No! The more 
daring — the better, to fit my mood l 

Just like Georgie Settle, I thought, to let me 
down at the last minute as he did. 

“Greatly regret, Mr. Collins cannot come.” 

This was the wire I got this evening at al- 
most the eleventh hour. T was in my kimono 
203 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


in Miss Rodney’s enormous bedroom — the room, 
by the way, that used to belong to Mrs. Wright’s 
pretty, chestnut-haired Nurse Egerton — doing 
Miss Rodney’s hair a new way for the eve- 
ning, when it arrived. 

4 4 There ! ” I said , 4 4 isn ’t this annoying ¥ That 
makes our party uneven again, and I do hate 
having one girl too many; it instantly makes 
what men there are think such a lot more of 
themselves, which isn’t necessary, goodness 
knows, and yet there’s nobody else I can ask 
on the spur of the moment, now can I?” 

44 Yes !” said both the Miss Rodneys together, 
and I knew what they meant. Well, it’s they 
who have forced me into it, I didn’t really m^an 
to do it. 

The maid at the door said demurely, 4 4 The 
boy’s waiting, miss; is there any answer for 
him?” 

4 4 No, none,” I said, but in the same breath I 
added: 4 4 Yes, he can take a wire for me.” 

I dashed to the writing-table in the corner of 
Miss Rodney’s bedroom. I took out a tele- 
graph-form and scribbled on it as if for dear 
204 


THE HOUSE-WARMING 

life. It was to ask Mr. Lancaster to come and 
dine with ns, if possible, at eight o’clock. 

At ten minutes to eight that evening we were 
all assembled in the big, flower-filled drawing- 
room : fair Miss Rodney in dull Dresden blue ; 
dark, vivacious little Miss Royds in tomato-red ; 
gentle Miss Rickards in a silvery-grey that 
matched those threads in her hair, but at the 
same time brought out the pink flush of happi- 
ness in her cheeks, and made her look younger 
than ever. 

Peeps at myself in the glass showed me that, 
though I say it as shouldn’t, I had never looked 
better. The frock was full or skimpy in ex- 
actly the right places — that is, right for the 
fashion of that year! So as not to look too 
young, I had wound an orange velvet fillet about 
my curls, clasping it with a lemon-yellow 
aigrette that stood impudently upright. 

Miss Rickards didn’t want me to wear it; she 
said it gave me the appearance of a cherub try- 
ing to be a little devil. I didn’t care, I just 
wanted to look wicked for once, and I was glad 
of the new, dare-devil light which shone, for the 
205 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


first time I had ever seen it there, out of my 
eyes, and if my own eyes in the glass hadn’t 
shown me that I really was delightful to look 
at, the eyes of all the four young men, my guests, 
would have told me over again — I couldn’t help 
seeing that ! 

I couldn’t help wishing, just to pay him out, 
that the other, the fifth young man I had in- 
vited, would turn up soon, and would see that 
I — that he — well, anyhow, that he would see. 

But it was five minutes to eight, and our last 
guest hadn’t come. Terribly short notice, of 
course; perhaps he hadn’t even got my wire. 

Well, everybody else would enjoy themselves, 
they were beginning already, in fact! The 
drawing-room was a buzz of talk and laughter. 
There had been no ice to break, and I wondered 
how much more festive it would get after the 
champagne, the songs, and the dancing! 

I hadn’t allowed the drawing-room curtains 
of riotous parrot chintz to be drawn; I said I 
liked the glimpse of the quiet blue night be- 
yond the Heath. . . . 

But ah, I could not keep away from the win- 
206 


THE HOUSE-WARMINGr 

dow, from stealing glances out, towards the 
lamp in front of the entrance. 

Would he come? 

Yes? No? ... No; probably no . . . 

I had just given up all hope, when, suddenly, 
yes ! There he was. The lamplight shone full 
on the outline of a head and shoulders that I 
knew. I couldn’t see his face under his opera- 
hat. Well, I didn’t need to, I should have rec- 
ognised anywhere that characteristic breadth, 
that tall figure and striding walk. 

He’d come! I turned from the window, all 
a-flutter, hoping that Mr. Lancaster hadn’t seen 
me looking out ! After all, though, why should 
I mind if he had? I was his hostess. Any 
hostess has a right to be anxious about the com- 
ing of the last guest if she doesn’t want her 
well-thought-out dinner to be spoiled. 

So I turned back to the room, clapping my 
hands. I said, in a gay, artificial voice, which 
I had never heard before : “We shall be able to 
go in directly, our last guest has arrived. Mr. 
Paul Lancaster is coming up now.” At the 
same moment there came his ring at the bell. 
207 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
I went on chatting gaily about private theat- 
ricals to Charlie Royds. 

It seemed an hour before anything else hap- 
pened! Remember, I had not seen him for 
weary weeks. Now, in these bewildering cir- 
cumstances, I was to see him. I was his host- 
ess, of all things in the world ! Paul Lancaster 
my guest ! 

Feverishly I wondered again if he would find 
me looking pretty. ... I believe I held my 
breath until the drawing-room door opened. 

It opened. 

The august form of Rawlinson appeared just 
inside. And that ex-butler of a countess, with 
his most “high society” manner and his most 
crystal-clear enunciation, proclaimed in tones 
that seemed to ring through the room a name 
that made every other sound in the place stop 
dead, and brought me and eight other people 
springing to our feet aghast as we heard the 
announcement : 

* * Mis-ter — Paul — Wright ! 9 9 

For a second I felt just as one feels in a 
dream that one knows is a dream. 

208 


THE HOUSE-WARMING 


I felt myself saying, “I shall wake up pres- 
ently, and find out that this can’t be. It can’t! 
Of course, Mr. Wright is dead!” 

Another second, and I was staring at the 
young man in evening dress who strode into 
the drawing-room with one quick, challenging 
glance from one to another of my assembled 
dinner-party. 

A tall, young man, broad-shouldered, like 
“my” Mr. Lancaster, and, like him, fair; just 
a little like him, too, in the face which, from one 
hasty glance, I saw to be clean-cut and boyish. 

But this was not he. This was not anybody 
but the original of a photograph which I had 
once seen — the rightful owner of the house, 
Mrs. Wright’s grandson! 

Discovery was bound to come . . . hadn’t I 
dreaded it? It had come in the shape of my 
tenth guest. 


209 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE TENTH GUEST 

T HE rosy brightness of the drawing-room 
seemed to grow darker round me. 

I heard a man’s voice — it was one of 
the Royds boys — calling : 

“Look out, sir! You’ve frightened Miss 
Beaugard! She thinks you’re a ghost! She’s 
going to faint!” 

Then came an arm slipped gently round me — 
it was Miss Rickards’ — and a handful of cold 
water was dashed in my face, that and a scent 
of violets were all of which I was conscious for 
a minute or two. 

I afterwards found that Miss Royds had 
snatched a great bouquet of Russian violets out 
of a crystal bowl on the table near me, and had 
flung the water from them into my face. 

I sat up, gasping, drops of water trickling 
down from my curls into my eyes. 

210 


THE TENTH GUEST 

I glanced round. Everybody was standing 
up, looking as agitated as if they had just es- 
caped from a house which had been on fire. I 
heard myself cry desperately : 

“What has happened ?” 

And then a strange man's voice, low-toned, 
pleasant, yet with mockery in its accent, an- 
swered : 

“What has happened? As always, the unex- 
pected. No, I am not a ghost. A ghost has to 
have been killed first, hasn’t he? and, you see, 
I was not killed in that railway accident, after 
all. I have come back.” 

Forgetting all the others I looked hard into 
the face of this stranger, who returned the stare. 

I waited for a breathless second . . . every- 
body else in the room seemed to melt away from 
about us. I was sitting on one of the low chairs. 
Then the young man came close up to me. He 
took both my hands firmly into his, and bent 
down as if to whisper some tenderest greeting. 

But what he said, softly and hurriedly, was, 
“I’ve heard about it from the lawyers, you 
know. Well?” his tone was a mixture of 
211 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


amusement, surprise, and a kind of insolence. 
“What about it? Do we have it out now, you 
and I, or afterwards ? ’ ’ 

“Afterwards,” I faltered, gathering my scat- 
tered senses together, with a glance at my party, 
all clustered together at the further end of the 
big room. They were thrilled, I know, to imag- 
ine that the tragedy of a young girl’s life was 
to end happily, as they thought! after all. 

I, the intruder, the humbug and fraud who 
was going to be unmasked, could not endure 
to think it must be before all these ... I fal- 
tered, “Afterwards, please!” 

He nodded. Then : 

“Dinner is served!” boomed the august voice 
of the imperturbable Rawlinson at the door. 

Miss Rickards stole up to me then, with a 
smile and a clasp of the hand and a whisper 
about ‘ ‘ thinking they had better be getting on. ’ r 
Her fiance, looking over her shoulder, seemed 
almost as if he were going just to bow a “good 
night” and go. And then there were murmurs 
from the Roydses about “quite understanding,” 
212 


THE TENTH GUEST 


and being “so frightfully bucked, don’t you 
know!” but “really thinking they wouldn’t 
stay ” 

“Stay? But, of course you must!” broke in 
the unfamiliar voice of the unexpected guest — 
or host. “We can’t have the party broken up 
like this! We won’t hear of it! Time enough 
for — er — explanations afterwards, isn’t there? 
The dinner party must go on,” — turning to me 
— “mustn’t it?” 

He added, almost inaudibly, “You’ll have to 
play up to me ” 

Feeling almost grateful, I “played up” as 
well as the spur of this moment allowed me. 

“Of course they’ll stay. They can’t not 
stay!” I cried, and managed to laugh. “Come 
along! You all know who you’ve got to take 
in, I think?” this to Georgie Settle and the other 
men. Then holding my head high under its yel- 
low aigrette, I turned to this miraculously-re- 
turned Mr. Wright. 

“You’ve come to take the place of your own 
cousin, that other Paul, who’s failed me.” (I 
213 


THE WEONG MR. RIGHT 


added a soft “Thank Heaven !” to myself.) 
“So will you take me in?” 

“With pride !” said the tenth guest, while 
mockery danced in his blue eyes. 

And we all went down. 

Looking back, I can scarcely remember what 
really happened at that nightmare of a party. 

Courses came and went, dishes were handed 
to me by the imperturbable Rawlinson, of which 
I ate mouthfuls, tasting nothing. 

There was a buzzing and chattering round me 
of the other guests — much talk of “ congratula- 
tions’ J — much laughter, in which the man at my 
side seemed to be joining satirically — a popping 
of champagne-corks. 

I know I drank champagne ; I had heard that 
it was good for moments of stress ! And pres- 
ently I was laughing too, and bandying chaff 
with Georgie Settle on my other side. 

He had become sentimental, and was accus- 
ing me, sotto voce , of having most cruelly jilted 
him. 

“ ‘ Jilted’ you? What a fearful fib !” I heard 
myself crying quite shrilly. ‘ ‘ How can there be 
214 


THE TENTH GUEST 

any ‘ jilting ’ where there has never been any- 
thing in the shape of a love affair ?” 

“Ah, Miss Morwenna, that’s because no lady 
admits that any affair has been a love affair,” 
broke in the rather excited voice of one of Miss 
Royds’ brothers, “until the ‘one and only’ hap- 
pens.” 

“Yes,” broke in the voice of the other Royds. 
“You mean ‘until Mr. Right comes along,’ as 
that white-whiskered old saying has it ! ” 

Then my companion’s voice: “Does that 
mean Wright with a W, or Right with an R?” 

Then a confused murmur of voices. 

“In this case it’s the same thing!” 

“Yes, in this most fortunate case!” 

“Like the end of a novel!” 

“Like a fairy-tale, a tale of adventure.” 

“Like Eugene Aram, or — what’s that other 
chap? — Rip Van Winkle come to life!” 

“Yes, and to find a party and everything in 
honour of it! Isn’t it wonderful?” 

“Wonderful, indeed!” the man at my side 
broke in with his malicious gaiety. “I think 
215 




THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
we all ought to drink a toast to that! Fill up 
your glasses !” 

Again Rawlins on with a snowy table napkin 
draped about the big gold-topped bottle, came 
and filled the priceless tall champagne-glasses, 
scarcely to be bought nowadays, with the bub- 
bling liquid gold. 

“You give the toast, Morwenna.” (“Is that 
your name?” Mr. Wright added hurriedly into 
my ear. “My felicitations; you’ve chosen a 
pretty one!”) “You give the toast.” 

And, desperate with bravado, I saw, reflected 
in the big sheet of looking-glass that formed 
‘the base of the table-centre, a positive Bac- 
chante of a girl, flushed rose-pink, with brilliant 
eyes and an excited smile and tossed brown 
curls glittering with drops, and a daring yellow 
gown that fell away far too low from her neck 
and shoulders, and a slender white arm that held 
aloft a champagne glass, while a small but 
shrilly laughing voice cried aloud : 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to drink 
to Mr. Wright! Here’s to my Mr. Wright with 
a W ! And Mr. Right with an R for every other 
216 


THE TENTH GUEST 


girl present ! May he very soon come along for 
them — ‘ For he ’s a jolly good Fellow ! 1 ’ ’ I reck- 
lessly started the song. 

The Royds hoys took it up, and it rang 
through the room, up to the old corniced ceil- 
ing, making the drooping lustres on the chan- 
delier quiver and tinkle to the sound — “ Which 
nobody can deny! which nobody can deny ” 

I wondered, in the midst of it all, what Raw- 
linson’s late mistress would have thought of the 
party — what Rawlinson thought. . . . 

But the one thing at the back of my mind was 
the “afterwards” when I was to have it all out 
with the man who had been decent enough, after 
all, to let me mark time up to then. 

They all enjoyed themselves, I expect, put- 
ting down my wild, unnatural excitement, my 
pathetic rowdiness, to the fact that I was “over- 
joyed.” {Heavens!) 

And they all, those others, seemed in league 
to cut short the smoking, the talking, the sing- 
ing — to bring me nearer to the end of the party, 
and to that dreaded “afterwards.” 

Well, it came. . . . 


217 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


They all went . . . even Miss Rodney and her 
sister slipped off to their room without saying 
“Good night.” They thought it only kind to 
leave me the drawing-room to myself at the 
first possible moment — with him. 

How big he looked, against the disorder of 
the drawing-room, with cushions awry, and cof- 
fee-cups all over the place, and the atmosphere 
still vibrant with the talk and laughter of the 
party who had stood between me and what he 
had to say to me ! 

Well, it was face to face now. I turned and 
met his eyes, feeling very small, very helpless, 
and very much at bay. For a moment he looked 
down on me without speaking. 

Then he said slowly, “You funny little ad- 
venturess!” 

I stiffened all over myself. It helped me 
not to be frightened, being so angry. I echoed, 
“Adventuress ...” Then I said hotly, “Don’t 
dare to say such a thing to me ! ’ ’ 

“Why not?” asked the young man, almost 
amusedly. “I know what you’ve done, you 
know. Bamboozled my grandmother into 
218 


THE TENTH GUEST 


leaving you her house and money because she 
thought I was attached to you. I! To a girl 
I’d never seen. A pretty good joke that. 
Worth coming hack from the dead for. Worth 
leaving off being a ‘Wilful-Missing.’ ” 

Not knowing what to say, I blurted out, 
“What is a ‘wilful-missing’?” 

The young man’s voice hardened as he said, 
“Somebody who thinks he’s better dead, and 
‘goes dead,’ to all intents and purposes, for the 
sake of other people. I was in British Colum- 
bia when I heard the news of my grandmother’s 
death . . . even wilful missings can be badly in 
need of money, you know. So I came over — 
to what ? ’ ’ 

I looked at him, helplessly. 

“You can judge of my surprise,” said Mr. 
Wright quickly, “when, on presenting myself 
at my lawyer’s office and having got over his 
surprise and delight, etc., at finding that the 
returned prodigal hadn’t been done for after 
all in the railway smash which should have ac- 
counted for him— I found that the money and 
the house and everything had to be claimed, not 
219 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


from my cousin, but from an utter stranger — 
a young woman to whom my grandmother in her 
last illness seemed to have taken a very strong 
liking. Nothing extraordinary in that, you will 
say. ’ 9 

I couldn’t say anything. 

“You will admit that the extraordinary part 
was the reason my grandmother had given to 
the lawyer — apparently also to my cousin — for 
singling you out as her heiress!” 

“Yes,” I murmured. 

“Can you explain yourself at all!” demanded 
Mr. Wright. 

Well, then I tried. ... In faltering, ill-ex- 
pressed feverish little sentences it came out at 
last, the wild and silly story I ought to have 
told so long ago. The story I have written 
here. 

He listened, sometimes cynical, sometimes 
half-amused. . . . He put questions to me now 
and again, about my own people, my life in the 
country before I came to work in town. Once 
he said, “They manage these things better in 
the East! No woman ought to have money of 
220 


THE TENTH GUEST 


her own, and young girls ought to be kept be- 
hind a Purdah !” 

He asked, 4 4 Then you ’re the girl my precious 
cousin told me to leave alone, the only time I 
came to his office?” 

4 4 Yes,” I said, remembering that day at 
Frith Chambers. 44 I know your voice now. 
You told him that you’d do as you chose. I 
overheard. But, since you’d never seen me, 
how did you know he meant me?” 

“I didn’t,” said the young man who had been 
cross-examining me. His voice was gloomier 
as he said, 44 I thought he had the neck to be 
speaking of somebody else. ...” 

I remembered then that he had told his grand- 
mother there was one girl he’d cared for. Now, 
from his manner, I imagined her dead. 

He was looking at me, hard. 

4 4 And that’s your story, is it?” he began 
again. 4 4 And you object to being called an ad- 
venturess? I find you in my grandmother’s 
house, with a party of cheery young friends, 
obviously rejoicing in your good fortune — 
champagne, hot-house flowers, and heaven 
221 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


knows what not! I congratulate you on the 
dinner, Miss Morwenna ; it was a very good one. 
All the same, don’t you think the whole set-out 
rather justified me in what I have just said? 
What did it look like?” Then, more brutally: 
“And what did you look like?” 

He pointed at one of the big mirrors, and I 
turned to see myself full-length in that low-cut, 
daring frock, that aigrette crowning my curls 
at a rakish angle, which Miss Rickards had said 
made me look wicked. 

And the face below the aigrette was no longer 
the face of a girl, it seemed to me ! I felt years 
older, and I looked it. It was the face of a 
very miserable young woman, found out in the 
midst of some unspeakable folly. 

And I dropped my head and turned away 
from the mirror with burning cheeks. As I did 
so I heard him say, almost curiously : 

“She can still blush! A very pretty colour 
too!” 

At that I turned on him again. 

“Don’t speak to me like that!” I cried. “You 
are a gentleman by birth — that I know, because 
222 


THE TENTH GUEST 


I knew your grandmother, and I know your 
cousin; and he knows that my people at least 
were the same. You can turn me out of the 
house — in fact, I am going; I’ll go to-night — 
hut you must not speak to me as you have just 
been speaking ” 

And I stopped, for I knew that in another 
moment I should break down and disgrace my- 
self. 

“Women’s tears don’t make any difference 
to me,” remarked Mr. Paul Wright, but in 
rather an altered voice. The insolence was 
gone from it, though the words remained in- 
solent. “I’ve seen too many of ’em.” 

I held my head high. 

“I wasn’t thinking of crying,” I said. “Ho 
you mind telling me what you are going to do 
about this thing!” 

I clenched my hands to stop them from trem- 
bling ; for I had begun to see a perfectly awful 
picture of the future, with Uncle Joseph’s grey 
hairs brought down in shame to the grave, and 
my brother Jim cabled for from Ceylon to 
appear in court and see his only sister in the 
223 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

dock as a common felon ! Steadying my voice, 
I asked him: 

“Do you intend to prosecute ?” 

Then, while he still stared at me, came what 
seemed like five minutes’ deathly silence. 

Then he said, “No. The lawyers have had 
quite enough money out of us as it is.” 

I breathed deeply. 

He said, “As for what else I shall do ” 

Here Rawlinson appeared at the door, evi- 
dently coming to see whether it was not time 
to put out all the lights, and close up for the 
night. He withdrew with an apology, but I 
wondered whether he were thinking that ‘ 1 Her 
Ladyship” would not have stayed up after the 
rest of a dinner-party had departed to go on 
talking and talking to the last guest. 

But Mr. Paul Wright seemed to think there 
was something in the butler’s point of view, 
for he took his elbow off the mantelpiece, 
straightened himself, and said: 

“Well, I suppose I’d better go. I shall come 
again, of course, and I shall expect to find you 
here. So please don’t talk about leaving the 
224 


THE TENTH GUEST 


house to-night in those ridiculous satin slip- 
pers, because it can’t be done. Good night.” 

He turned to the door. 

Then he said, in a voice that made me sud- 
denly remember that this young man was sup- 
posed to be very attractive to women, “I say, 
I did not really think you were an adventuress. 
No real born adventuress would have let her 
butler choose the champagne. . . . Au revoir!” 

He went, leaving me to a sleepless night. 




225 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE FIANCES 

W jHO would have dreamed that, the next 
time I saw that young man, I should 
become engaged to him? 

Yes! Really engaged. . . . 

The time between his leaving me and that 
next call was one of agony. It held just fever- 
ish futile planning of what I was to do next 
for myself and for the Rodneys. For myself 
— well, I should have to work, of course. But 
the Rodneys! My Miss Rodney had got a 
fairly good post in a newspaper office now, but 
her sister ... I wondered if I could appeal to 
Mr. Wright for poor Miss Grizel. 

I did not know how I should face it all, I did 
not know! 

Of course the Rodneys would hear all about 
my fraud. So would Paul Lancaster. That 
was the worst of all ! 


226 


THE FIANCES 

From him I received a short note the day 
after my party. 

* ‘ Hear Miss Beatjgard, — It was very kind of 
you to invite me to your party last night. Un- 
fortunately I had gone out for the evening when 
your telegram arrived, and I did not receive it 
till I came home, when it was too late to let you 
know. 

“With regrets, believe me, 

“Yours very truly, 

“Paul Lauc aster.’ ’ 

I did not know whether to feel relieved or 
sorry that he had not been there. In one way 
I had escaped a horror. On the other hand, 
it would have meant that the worst was over, 
and that he knew this tangled, crooked tale of 
my deceits and humbug, and it would not be still 
to face. 

It hung over me — Oh, I wish I could explain 
to you how it loomed ! 

Yes, on the morning after the party, I felt 
I wished I could lie back again against the big 
227 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


frilly pillow, go to sleep and never wake up to 
face the complications and the hideous diffi- 
culties that were before me. 

The Rodneys. . . . 

Fresh situation for myself. . . , 

Paul Lancaster. . . . 

Poor Miss Grizel Rodney, who was so com- 
fortable here, turned out. . . . 

I had brought it upon myself ! 

I saw nobody until the afternoon, when Paul 
Wright came again. 

Then I went down to him in the morning- 
room, a little room looking over the garden at 
the back. I wore my usual black ; he was in a 
grey suit with a mourning-band. Handsome, I 
suppose they would call him, but I did not find 
him sufficiently like his cousin to be really 
handsome. He shook hands as if it were an 
ordinary call. Then we sat down and he asked 
me a few more questions about my time here 
with his grandmother. 

Then I made what excuses I could find for 
myself. 

“They told me,” I defended myself, “that if 
228 


THE FIANCES 

I crossed her in anything it was dangerous, 
that I was to agree with everything she said, 
that it was a question of whether her last few 
days were happy or miserable, according to 
whether I fell in with everything she wanted 
me to.” 

“Who told you all this?” 

“The doctor and your cousin, Mr. Lancaster, 
and her nurse.” 

“Meaning Nurse Egerton?” he said. 

And as I answered him, “Yes,” I saw again 
the pretty face flushed with anger under the 
chestnut hair. How she had loved him! . . . 
She, too, would have to hear the story. Well ! 
I had meant to tell her. I would write to her 
at the Hostel, later. 

I wondered if he would say anything more 
about her? . . . No. . . . 

He said only, “Well, I suppose I owe it to 
you now to tell you what I made up my mind 
to do, yesterday, with regard to you.” 

“Yes, yes !” I said. 

“At first,” he said slowly, “when I left you 
I intended to offer you a pension out of my 
229 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


grandmother’s money in consideration of your 
having been some pleasure to her in the last 
days of her life. Heaven knows I never was. 
Never ! Yes, to offer you this pension on con- 
dition that no more was said about the whole 
affair. You could give any explanation you 
liked to your friends, or to anybody who knew 
of the breaking off with me.” 

I gasped at this. Did he really mean that he 
"was letting me off! But this is 

“It’s frightfully generous of you!” I said. 
“Can you really mean it? To have nothing 
more said, I mean? For, of course, I am not 
going to take any more of the money. If you 
must give it away give it to the Rodneys. I 
won’t have it.” 

“I am not offering it any more now,” he said 
quietly. “There’s another alternative which 
will still mean that nobody need know of your 
— call it prevarication — and it will mean even 
less talk about us. Can’t you guess what it 
is?” 

“No,” I said, staring at him, this extraor- 
dinary young man, who was like, yet so unlike, 
230 


THE FIANCES 

my Mr. Lancaster — who could break his grand- 
mother’s heart with his had ways, and who 
yet could have such power to win a woman’s 
love as had been shown by the frantic jealousy 
and grief of Nurse Egerton; who turned up 
without a word of warning or explanation, 
when everybody imagined him six months dead 
— who could be so stingingly insolent, and then 
turn round and behave with such unheard-of 
generosity. 

“What else is there? What do you wish me 
to do?” 

“This,” he said quietly. “I suppose all 
your friends, and my cousin, and any other peo- 
ple who knew you and the story of this house, 
imagine that you were the girl I wished to 
marry?” 

“I suppose so,” I said, flushing again with 
shame. “I mean — yes, they do think it.” 

“Well,” he said, still quietly and steadily, 
“let ’em go on thinking it. There are several 
reasons, but let one suffice for you — that I con- 
sider I have knocked about too long as” — he 
gave a bitter little laugh — “an uncared-for 
231 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


bachelor. I should be all the better for per- 
suading a ‘nice girl,’ even if she were as igno- 
rant of the ways of the world as you are, you 
poor little amateur in fraud, to take me in hand. 
That’s what I have come to ask you this after- 
noon. Will you, Miss Beaugard, go on being 
mistress of this house ? I mean, will you marry 
me?” 

I wondered if he were mad. . . . 

Presently I heard my own voice, very small 
and faltering, saying the next thing that oc- 
curred to me, namely: 

“Mr. Wright, are you in fun?” 

‘ ‘ Fun ? No ; I never asked a woman to marry 
me before, so you ought to consider it a bit of 
a compliment,” he said, with a funny little 
twisted, rueful smile. “I have given a night’s 
hard thinking to the question, and it seems to 
me it is not a bad idea. As I said, it will put 
a stop to a lot of talk there might be ; and here 
are we, two people pretty much alone in the 
world — you are rather alone, too, aren’t you?” 
he broke off. 

“Yes — oh, yes!” I said forlornly. 

232 


THE FIANCES 

4 ‘And we are also people who won’t expect 
too much of each other , 9 9 he said, while I looked 
at his face, boyish, wilful, but . . . what change 
had steadied it, making it older and more reli- 
able than the face of his portrait ? 

“ There are things about me,” he went on, 
“into which I shouldn’t wish my wife to look 
too closely.” 

I supposed he meant his disappearing for six 
months into the wilds, leaving a torn and flame- 
singed coat, with a card-case! in a railway 
smash to account falsely for his whereabouts. 

“You would leave me alone about those?” 

“Yes — oh, yes!” I said bewildered. “But 
as for marrying you — oh, it’s impossible!” 

“Why?” he asked, smiling at me as if I’d 
been a child who’d asked him the time. “Be- 
cause you’ve heard that I’ve not a particularly 
shining reputation? I don’t think you need 
be afraid of that now. Bemember the comfort- 
ing old proverb about a reformed rake making 
the best husband. I think you’d find me a tol- 
erable one. I shouldn’t exact much. And as 
for the odd reason that made you settle down 
233 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

here by fraud — those Rodney friends of yours 
— you could do what you liked for them once 
you were married to me.” 

“So very kind of you,” I stammered, “but 
really ” 

“You should have plenty of freedom,” he 
assured me, “plenty of pocket-money and 
frocks — everything a girl wants. ’ ’ 

Everything! I smiled very bitterly. 

What an idea he had of “everything” that 
constitutes a girl’s happiness! 

Perhaps he noticed the change in my face, for 
he added quickly : 

“Is there anybody else? I mean anybody 
else you might have been likely to marry in- 
stead?” 

“No,” I said, drearily. For by now I had 
persuaded myself that if the other Paul had 
wanted me, he would have said so. 

Then something struck me. 

I said: “What I want to ask you is — is there 
no other woman to whom you ought to be say- 
ing this?” 


234 


THE FIANCES 

“ Another woman? Are you thinking of 
anybody special ?” 

His steady gaze — a little like his cousin’s at 
that moment — and his tone showed me he knew 
that I was thinking of somebody. 

‘‘Who is it?” he asked, authoritatively. 

I said it, tentatively enough. 

“Nurse Egerton!” 

His reply to that seemed to slam a door in 
my face. It was so curt, so surprising. 

He said, “Nurse Egerton is married!” 

“Married!” I gasped. That chestnut-haired 
passionate girl, whose secret love-tragedy she 
had angrily displayed to me after she had left 
this house where we’d lived for weeks together! 
I knowing nothing of her, or she of me ! 

And I was a fraud, and she — 

“A married woman!” 

“Yes,” he said shortly. “That’s all we 
need say about her. If you please, her name 
will not be mentioned between us again.” 

So this is one of the things into which he 
does not wish his wife to look very closely! 
Strange ! What hidden story was there? 

235 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“And your answer ?” he added. “What is 
it?” 

“What can it be, Mr. Wright? It must be 
‘No.’ Don’t you understand that a girl can’t 
marry some one whom she has scarcely seen?” 

“No?” he said mockingly. 

It was as if he had said: “But she can use 
his name for that of her lover, whether she has 
seen him or not!” 

He added, “I am not asking you to marry 
me at once, out of hand. There could he an 
engagement of sorts, couldn’t there?” 

“Do you ask me to answer that, too, at 
once?” I said timidly, but a little defiantly, as 
I glanced over his shoulder at the portrait on 
the wall of his grandmother as a very lovely 
girl, a white-clad bride. She was smiling, smil- 
ing. Ah ! As a bride she had been loved ! She 
had not submitted to any “engagement of 
sorts.” 

She had loved, too. 

I said, “Of course, if you don’t mind my 
never caring for you !” 

“I don’t bargain for it,” said Paul Wright. 

236 


THE FIANCES 

And then his blue eyes danced mockingly again. 
It was almost as if they had told me, “It will 
be a change! Women have always ‘ cared ’ for 
me!” 

But he only ended up by saying, “If I don’t 
mind our not caring for each other, it’s ‘Yes,’ 
is it?” 

“Yes,” I agreed. (There was nothing else 
to say.) 

He nodded as he held out his hand. We were 
engaged. 


237 


CHAPTER XX 


AST i 6 ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS ’ ’ 

W E were engaged — to be married “as 
soon as I thought I could stick it,” 
said Mr. Wright. “No hurry.” . . . 
So I continued to live in the big Well Walk 
house with the Rodneys “for the present”; 
and he (my fiance) took on some old rooms of 
his in Jermyn Street. He talked of “work”; 
I don’t know what it was. Something to do 
with investments. I am afraid I wasn’t in- 
terested. . . . 

Looking back now, I can see how extraordi- 
nary that young man must have found me, to 
be so little interested in him ! All other women 
seemed to like him so much. Both the Rod- 
neys found him charming. I Well, if a 

man is not the right man for a girl, no reason- 
ing will make him so. Yet how kind he was, 
this “reformed rake,” who was going to marry 
238 


AN “ ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 


a reformed humbug out of pity and to make the 
best of a bad and complicated business ! Shall 
I ever forget the day he brought me my engage- 
ment ring? 

It was in the drawing-room that had wit- 
nessed our first meeting that I came in that 
afternoon to find him. 

“ Won’t you sit down?” I said, remembering 
as always the absurdity of my having to ask 
him to sit down in what was, after all, his own 
house. He had given it up of his own free 
will, but how could I look upon it as mine? 

He sat down at one end of the sofa, and I sat 
on the black satin pouffe the other side of the 
hearthrug. Silence fell between us. 

He broke it, saying flippantly but not un- 
kindly : 

1 ‘ This is rather a chilling distance to be set 
between two newly-engaged people! Won’t 
you come and sit down here” — touching the 
sofa beside him — “and let me show you some- 
thing I have brought for you?” 

“Very well,” I said, trying not to sound too 
reluctant. I sat down by him on the very edge 
239 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

of the sofa, and looked straight in front of me 
at a green bowl of growing jonquils. 

Again the kindly, flippant tone sounded be- 
side me : 

“What are you thinking of?” 

I was thinking of my friend, the younger 
Miss Rodney, now an engaged girl also. The 
sub-editor in that newspaper office had fallen 
in love with her, and they were to be married 
in the autumn. I knew how happy she was. 
And ah, the contrast ! She was at that moment 
hurrying to meet her fiance. I had taken ages 
putting on a fresh blouse so as to postpone this 
evil hour of my interview with mine. 

So I said lightly: 

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of anything partic- 
ular. ’ ’ 

“Well, you don’t seem in a great hurry to 
see what it is I have brought for you!” 

He spoke as if I were a child to whom he 
was showing a new toy, then put his hand in 
his pocket and drew out a little oblong box of 
white velvet. Under his fingers it flew open, 
and disclosed to me on its padded bed of white 
240 


AN 4 ‘ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 

satin a wonderful ring of sapphires, with tiny 
brilliants set between each. 

“How lovely!” I said, trying to speak heart- 
ily — but being engaged had taken all the “lilt” 
out of my voice as well as all the spring out of 
my walk and the joy out of my heart. 

I hoped I should get accustomed to it — imag- 
ine that, you happily engaged girls! I hoped 
it! For at that moment I had only been en- 
gaged two days, and only ten minutes of these 
had been passed in the society of my fiance. 

He said, “I chose blue stones, you see, for 
the obvious reason. You have very lovely eyes, 
Morwenna, if I may say so.” 

“You may if you like, of course.” And a 
pang rent me to think that if only Some One 
Else had cared to say that, the whole earth 
would have been transformed for me into a 
fairy rose-garden, lighted up by a silvery full 
moon and a million pink lights. If — if it had 
been another man ! 

This man said, in his half-amused, half- 
piqued tone: “Does she like her ring?” 

“Oh, yes! Yes, thank you ” 

241 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“May I put it on for you?” 

“Oh, I can,” I said. 

He let me put it on myself. 

I leant forward, looking at the flashing blue 
fire of it, and wondering what it would feel like 
to wear somebody else’s signet-ring, say: yes! 
just his plain gold signet-ring with his mono- 
gram: “P. L. ” 

“So now we’re really engaged,” said Paul 
Wright’s voice closer to me. “You’ve got your 
ring — don’t I get anything?” 

I saw what he meant, and felt perfectly 
awful about it. 

I clenched the hand with ring into the 
drapery of my skirt; I stiffened my back to 
the ordeal. I waited a second until I was sure 
that I had my voice well under control. Then 
I said steadily : 

“If you wish it, you may kiss me.” 

There was an odd mixture of expressions in 
my fiance’s tone as he replied, “Oh! Thank 
you so much.” 

(I couldn’t quite make it out.) 

He put his hand out, taking mine with the 
242 


AN “ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 

ring on it ; and then just when I was stiffening 
myself once more for the trial which had to 
be faced, he raised my hand to his lips, and 
kissed it very lightly; then dropped it again, 
and moved a little way back from me. 

Was that all! In my relief I wonder that 
I didn’t say it aloud. Perhaps my expression 
did, for my fiance answered it. 

“My dear child,” he said, “don’t imagine I 
shall ever try to rush you into anything you 
don’t like. Take your own time, by all means.” 

“Oh, thank you,” I murmured, all gratitude. 
“I do think you are kind!” 

“I’m glad you don’t consider me a mere 
ravening wolf,” he said dryly. Then, in a tone 
that was almost coaxing, I heard him say, “Per- 
haps you won’t always dislike me so.” 

“Perhaps not — I mean — I mean I don’t dis- 
like you. How could I? I’m too grateful!” 

“Good,” he said, dryly again. “We’ll see 
if gratitude can be turned into . . . anything 
less copy-bookish presently. Of course we 
shall have to spend rather a lot of hours to- 
243 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


gether, I’m afraid. Afraid for your sake, I 
mean. What shall we talk about ?” 

I shook my head, gazing again at that glit- 
tering new fetter on my finger. 

“What do most engaged people talk about? 
Love, I suppose,’ ’ he suggested with a short 
laugh. “Have you any theories on the sub- 
ject, you pretty child with boy’s curls and an 
Early-Vic. muslin frock? Tell me!” 

But oh, how I wanted to avoid that of all 
other subjects! I said, shyly, “Do you like 
reading? Your grandmother thought I read 
aloud rather well.” 

“Oh, you propose that we shall spend our 
tete-a-tete as an engaged couple by reading 
aloud instead of conversing? Very well, Mor- 
wenna. What did you read to my grand- 
mother?” 

“I used to read Jane Austen. Shall I read 
some to you?” 

“Anything,” he said, and sat back among 
the cushions on the sofa. 

I rose, fetched out the first volume of Pride 
and Prejudice from the Chippendale bookcase, 
244 


AN “ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 


then sat down again on the black satin pouffe, 
and began to read aloud. 

Steadily, for an hour and more, I read, for- 
getting all my troubles in the delightful soci- 
ety of the Miss Bennetts. 

I was living in the past when the present 
reappeared in the august form of Rawlinson, 
carrying the huge silver tea-tray that had been 
a wedding present to my fiance’s grandmother. 
He found me laughing as I read. 

So let’s hope he thought I had just picked up 
the book to quote some amusing passage to my 
young man. For it was only just in time that 
Paul Wright, who had fallen fast asleep! had 
started up with a jerk, and had sat upright 
among the cushions, looking as alert as a sentry 
on duty. 

Then Miss Grizel came down, and presently 
the other engaged pair, looking ridiculously 
happy, came in — and then, at all events, there 
was plenty of conversation. 

From Paul Lancaster I received a stiff and 
staid little note of congratulation on my en- 
245 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


gagement to his cousin; since when I did not 
see him again. 

Miss Rodney had heard that since his work 
on the Encyclopaedia had come to an end, the 
young engineer had taken up some road-survey- 
ing job, somewhere in the country. 

My fiance never mentioned him. His name 
was therefore never in my ears, but oh. how 
persistently his image remained in my heart! 
His broad-shouldered figure, his face of a big 
boy, his rather gruff, reluctant speech, and that 
smile and dimple of his that changed his whole 
appearance in a second! 

They say the sight of one man drives out the 
remembrance of another. It wasn’t so with 
me. It made it worse, I think, that these two 
cousins were, superficially, alike. Paul Wright 
reminded me with every look and every word 
that he was not the right Paul ! 

In his way he was perfect. No; he never 
“ rushed” me. He kept to his times for calling 
when I expected him. Mondays, dinner. Tues- 
days and Fridays, an hour after dinner. Sat- 
urdays we lunched together and spent the rest 
246 


AN “ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 

of the day “doing our duty” as he put it with 
a quaint look. Very often we went to the thea- 
tre, and I found myself reflecting that theatres 
and picture-galleries and music-halls did away 
with quite a lot of the terror of an engagement. 

Its “terror”! What would Ella Rodney 
have thought of that idea ! 

On Sundays he came to tea and stayed to sup- 
per — talking a good deal to Miss Grizel, who 
grew to like him more and more. So did I. 
Oh, yes, I grew to like this fiance of mine, this 
queer mixture of by-gone “wildness” and pres- 
ent-day respectability and settled-down-ness. 

Perhaps, if I had never seen or felt anything 
else, I should have imagined that “liking” to 
be all one need feel towards a husband. 

Nowadays, looking back, I see he was wooing 
and wooing me all the time to do more than 
“like” him, the handsome fellow who had been 
so much adored. . . . What an irony. . . . 

Then came the day when he told me he had 
got four tickets for the Artists’ Ball at the 
Albert Hall on the following week; should I 
care to go? 


247 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Should I care? For gaiety, and movement, 
and colour, and mad music, and having no time 
to think? All these essential things would be 
at the Ball! 

“And do you think your friend Miss Rodney 
and her sub-editor would care to join us?” 

Miss Rodney and her sub-editor, who loved 
dancing together, but who never before had 
been able to afford tickets for anything more 
than a two-and-sixpenny “hop” at the Ken- 
sington Town Hall, were simply overjoyed. 

I hadn’t looked forward to enjoying any- 
thing since I had been engaged. I looked for- 
ward to this ! 

I wanted to go as “Carnival” in a powder- 
puff skirt, with one pink rose, a wisp of tulle 
and a breath of fresh air as a bodice — it was 
Paul Wright who stopped that. 

“Not your style — or mine,” he said, unex- 
pectedly. “Remember, we’re highly proper, 
engaged people. Long skirts, please, my child, 
and something not too noticeable.” 

“A violet, perhaps?” I said, laughing. I 
felt quite gay at the thoughts of the noisy, jolly 
248 


AN “ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 


evening that was before us. “Or a Gainsbor- 
ough girl, in the simplest of white muslins and 
blue sashes, with criss-cross sandals and a blue 
ribbon in my curls f ’ ’ 

“That would suit you admirably,” he said. 
“And I would wear the man’s dress of the 
period myself.” Silken kneebreeches, a bro- 
caded waistcoat, a full-skirted coat and a bob- 
wig suited him, too. Miss Grizel Rodney said, 
when he came to call for me, that we were the 
best-looking couple she had seen! Then, as 
usual, she slipped out of the drawing-room to 
leave us alone. 

“Yes, you are very charming, Miss Gainsbor- 
ough,” he said gravely, and took my hand 
again, the one that wore his sapphires, and 
kissed it. It is the only kind of kiss that had 
marked our engagement, and of this I had al- 
ways been so glad. 

But now, seeing how good he had always 
been to me, how generously he had behaved in 
every way, and what a lot of trouble he took 
to think out things to please me, from the kind 
of stones in my ring to this very evening’s 
249 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

amusement, I felt that I had been chilly and 
grudging and ungrateful. 

So, impulsively, I said : 

“ Won’t you — you may, this evening, if you 
like. I m-mean, kiss me properly. I shan't 
m-mind. ’ 7 

“ Shan’t you, by Jove?” he said quickly. 
“Why, then ” 

He took a swift step towards me, I saw his 
eyes light up. 

And in that glance I read what “most girls” 
have found to be true of “most men,” namely, 
that the men are ready enough to kiss an at- 
tractive girl, whether or no she is “the right” 
girl. For to them, a kiss is not what it remains 
to us — a gift for the one and only beloved. 

It was a man’s poet who wrote the lines : 

“When far away from the lips that we love, 

We have hut to make love to the lips that are near!” 

At that moment, I saw that, whatever image 
of another woman it is that stands always be- 
tween us, she, for that instant at least, was ban- 
ished from the mind of Paul Wright. 

250 


AN “ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS” 


And I, remembering “it’s my duty!” would 
have gone through with it. I would have let 
him kiss me as he chose. 

I shut my eyes, and then, in the very moment 
of trying not to flinch, I found myself, with- 
out meaning to, shrink instinctively back. 

Wildly I thought, “I hope he hasn’t no- 
ticed ” He must have noticed, though. 

For lightly and affectionately, even as a 
brother might have done it, it was my cheek 
only that he touched with his lips. 

Then we went off to that dance; and as we 
did so, a hope was born in my mind. What 
lots of girls fell in love at dances! Couldn’t I 
manage it? 


251 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE SHADOWY THIKD 

T HE beginning of that night’s dance seems 
to me now more like some wonderful col- 
oured dream than any real dream that 
I have ever had. 

Through streams of limelight in rose-colour 
and orange and emerald-green, the fantasti- 
cally-attired figures of men and women danced 
and shimmered like jewelled motes in shafts of 
sunshine. 

The crash and rhythm of music, mingled 
with the laughter and talking, made the whole 
air vibrate. Everyday life seemed a thing 
apart. Nothing was real, but this colour and 
rhythm, and the swing of the waltz. 

How long ago, the days of those costly and 
gorgeous dances that went on until morning- 
light and that filled more space of the morning 
252 


THE SHADOWY THIRD 

newspaper than do the official communiques, 
now! 

I don’t know how often I danced with my 
fiance; it seemed to me that for hours we 
whirled over that perfect floor in perfect ac- 
cord; his arm steering me without effort, my 
steps answering to every touch. 

I was enjoying myself as I had not done for 
six whole months and longer. Free from care 
as a bird on the wing, I felt that a weight of 
loneliness were dropping from me at last. 

Music and movement drugged me, as they’ve 
drugged many a lover before now, into obli- 
vion. Or so I thought for the time. That gar- 
ish light and colour made what was near me 
indistinct. I sat at a supper-table for four 
with Ella Rodney and her fiance and my own, 
and I was my gayest self. 

“It suits you to enjoy yourself,” said Paul 
Wright. “We must come more often to this 
sort of show.” 

We danced again, and a curious thing hap- 
pened to me. I think it happens to most girls 
who have imagination, and a lover whom they 
253 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

don’t want — and a some one else who is no 
lover, but their only love. 

The man’s arm about my waist seemed sud- 
denly to be that of another man. The blonde 
face above me, blurred by our rapid circling, 
was another’s, another’s! 

I was waltzing then with Paul, my Paul. 

I closed my eyes to keep up the illusion. In 
my mind, as we danced, I was talking to him in 
a long, fond, foolish, imaginary conversation, 
to make up for the long months of silence that 
had been between us. 

How many girls have played that game? 
Safe enough, when the dream-confidence can be 
whispered into a lonely pillow, but not so safe 
when the unwanted lover is within sight and 
touch. . . . 

Presently, as I was murmuring half-timidly, 
half-triumphantly to my dream-partner Paul 
Lancaster, “Is it possible, then, that after all 
this time you do really care for me a tiny 
bit? . . I realized with a start that I had 
spoken the words aloud — and to Paul Wright. 

Close in my ear he answered quickly, ar- 

254 


THE SHADOWY THIRD 

dently, “Little Morwenna, do you want me to, 
then, after all?” 

I was dumb. 

His arm — it was his arm, and all the dreams 
had vanished! — tightened about me. “Do 
you?” he insisted through the waltz-music. 
“Do you?” 

I faltered: “Wait — Pm giddy ” We 

stopped. He drew me aside under one of the 
arches. 

“You are white,” he said, abruptly. 
“Would you like to go home now?” 

“Yes, — oh, yes! I would like to go away!” 

“Shall I find the others No: impossible 

to find any one in this mob,” he said. “Come 
along.” 

And presently I found I had left the dream 
of light and music and colour that had become 
only a nightmare to me. Scarcely knowing 
how I came to be there, I found myself hooded 
and cloaked in a taxi beside my fiance. 

“I won’t bother you with talking, little girl,’* 
he said, to my intense relief — though I need 
not have been surprised. Paul Wright was one 
255 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

of the few men IVe ever met who knew just 
when a woman didn’t want to be talked to. I 
suppose his long and varied experience with 
them had taught him. But now I was learning 
something too, and I wish I could pass on the 
conviction of that knowledge to any girl who 
is hesitating. There is one thing that is coun- 
ter charm and proof against the charms and 
tact and knowledge of the most attractive man 
in the world — and that one thing is love for 
another man, who may be blundering, tactless, 
boyishly clumsy, but who is right for you. 

There’s no explaining this; none! 

In silence we got to the end of the journey. 
Paul Wright helped me out of the cab and 
opened the door for me with my key. I had 
told the Rawlinsons they were to go to bed, and 
that nobody was to wait up ; they were to leave 
the spirit lamp with some soup and wine ready 
in the dining-room. 

i ‘Thank you,” I said, holding out my hand. 
“ Thank you so much! Good night.” 

He held it for a moment, looking down at me. 

“Do you know, child,” he said, “that when 
256 


THE SHADOWY THIRD 


you speak to me you never use my name? 
Can’t you say for once, ‘Good night, Paul’?” 

Instantly that image which had been with 
me at the dance rose up clear and distinct as a 
picture on the cinema-screen. It was to that 
other, and to no one else, that I spoke. 

“Good night, Paul.” 

And I know that Paul Wright began from 
that moment to think that he had made way 
with me, that I had begun to love him in the 
way that he was used to! Still he was too 
clever to “rush” me. Only his voice held a 
note of triumph as he returned ever so softly, 
“Good night, little Morwenna, darling /” 


257 


CHAPTER XXII 

ONE SPINSTER^ VIEW OF IT 

I TIPTOED up the stairs without turning 
on the lights, hut there was a thread of 
yellow light from under Miss Grizel Rod- 
ney’s door. She was awake, then. 

Presently I heard her voice calling softly: 
“Is that you, Ella!” 

“No; it’s Morwenna,” I called back, in a 
whisper, and I pushed the door open a little. 

Miss Grizel was sitting up in bed, with her 
fair hair, plaited into two braids, looped up be- 
side her ears, and giving her the look of some 
frail little Early Victorian lady against the 
background of the pillow. 

“I have only just woken up,” she said, smil- 
ing. “I heard you come in, and so I 

thought But are you by yourself!” she 

asked anxiously. “What is the matter! Why, 
you are flushed scarlet, child — your eyes look 
258 


ONE SPINSTER’S VIEW OF IT 

as if you had fever! Give me your hand. 
Your hands are cold as ice! What is it!” 

The kind tone, the warm touch, seemed to 
loosen in me some spring which had been para- 
lysed. Without a moment’s warning I flung 
myself forward into Miss Grizel Rodney’s 
arms, sobbing on the delicate little night- 
gowned shoulder. My hood fell away from my 
curls with the Gainsborough blue ribbon. I 
flung my arm with its white ruffles across my 
eyes. Sobs choked me. 

“My dear, you are overtired! You must be 
ill!” 

“No, I am not tired! No, it’s nothing so 
hopeful, and easy and pleasant as being merely 
ill!” I cried wildly. “It’s — oh, Miss Grizel, I 
must tell you — I must tell somebody, or my 
heart will break ! The matter is, that I am en- 
gaged to the wrong man . 9 ’ 

Miss Grizel patted my shoulder until I had 
calmed myself a little and was apologising for 
having frightened her. 

She smiled. 

“Do you imagine, Baby Beaugard, that this 
259 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

is the first time I’ve had to do with engaged 
girls ?” she laughed softly. “Or that IVe 
never before met that time-honoured institu- 
tion, a lovers’ quarrel?” 

“Oh! There was no — no quarrelling 99 

“Did you tell me that you were ‘ engaged to 
the wrong man’?” 

“Yes!” I faltered, miserably. 

“Well, my dear, isn’t that part of the time- 
honoured institution? Do you suppose that 
there’s an engaged girl breathing who hasn’t 
thought — or won’t think — at one time or an- 
other during her engagement that this is her 
fate? It’s human nature. ‘Ah, he disappoints 
me! He doesn’t come up to my hopes and 
dreams! This isn’t what I ought to feel! 
After all, perhaps he isn’t the right man,’ the 
thought comes; then — flick! it’s gone.” 

“Yes, but, Miss Grizel ” 

“That mood’s as common as a cold in the 
head. Only it doesn’t last as long, and it’s eas- 
ier to cure. The cure for it being to think of 
every other girl’s fiance, and of how inferior 
he seems beside your own.” 

260 


ONE SPINSTER’S VIEW OF IT 

i 1 Miss Grizel, that would cure the cases you 
are thinking of, but not mine!” I cried wildly. 
“You don’t understand; it isn’t that I am find- 
ing fault with Mr. Wright — I am only too grate- 
ful to him. You don’t know the reason — you 
don’t know how much reason I have. I am not 
thinking of his deficiencies. So far as be- 
haviour to me is concerned, he hasn’t got any; 
he has been perfection itself to me — it is not 
that!” 

Here I dashed my handkerchief across my 
eyes, heavy with fatigue. I swallowed a big 
lump in my throat, and I uttered briefly those 
four words that are responsible, I expect, for 
half the love-troubles in the universe. 

I said: “There is somebody else.” 

Miss Grizel stared at me. 

“Somebody else? Somebody you care for 
more than Mr. Wright?” 

I nodded vigorously; I couldn’t speak. 

There was a silence in the comfortable and 
pretty bedroom. I saw Miss Grizel ’s delicate 
kindly face grow more and more troubled. 
Anxiously she asked : 


261 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“How long, Baby Beaugard, has there been 
somebody else?” 

“Always,” I said, briefly and energetically.; 

“Before t” 

“Centuries before!” 

Miss Grizel nodded. “Then Ella was right. 
It should have been his cousin.” 

“He went away,” I explained. “He never 
cared.” 

“So, having lost the right man, you accepted 
the wrong one,” said the little invalid. “The 
most senseless, miserable thing that any girl 
can do.” 

“You think so? I thought that, if a woman 
can’t have the best, she’s wise to take the sec- 
ond-best. Then, at least, she’s something.” 

“She has her dreams,” said Miss Grizel 
softly. And the look of the eyes in the small 
pinched face was wonderful. “And some peo- 
ple believe that it is better for a woman to lose 
her right hand than that she should be disil- 
lusioned by the spoiling of her dreams. Can’t 
you return thanks, Morwenna, that you are only 
262 


ONE SPINSTER’S VIEW OF IT 

engaged, and not really married to the wrong 
man?” 

“But I’ve been feeling that I ought to marry 
him. Oh, you don’t know what I owe Paul 
Wright! I shall be grateful to him till I die. 
I should feel too utterly thankless and 
mean 99 

“It’s meaner,” she said, “to marry a man 
out of gratitude. Far better be like me, a 
solitary spinster to the end of your days. Far 
better, child, to break it off !” 

Those three words seemed to me like a door 
flung open of a prison . . . 

Break it off ! 

It was not too late, after all. 

Break it off — what I should be spared ! 

I went to my own room, determined. Yes; 
I’d break it off, the very next day. 


263 


CHAPTER XXin 


“akin to love” 

A ND to think that after all I did nothing 
of the kind. . . . 

I told Miss Grizel, afterwards, that it 
was not because of “gratitude.” But I didn’t 
tell her why it was. . . . 

I had strung myself up to tell Paul Wright 
as soon as he came. Not that I imagined it 
would he so very much of a wrench ! 

Why should he mind so very much? He had 
never pretended to be in love with me, and 
there were plenty of other girls who would be 
only too delighted to marry him for the sake 
of settling down — girls who hadn’t a real Mr. 
Wright of their own, and who would become 
genuinely fond of him. 

I meant to waste no time beating about the 
bush. . . . But it was he who came towards me, 
looking unrecognisably worried, older and 
264 


“AKIN TO LOVE” 

drawn, to say to me, “I have something to tell 
yon.” 

“What?” I said quickly, standing to face him 
on that rug. 

He looked at me, and said in a queer strained 
voice, “Perhaps you won’t think it so had as 
all that. . . . What a colour you ’ve got ! Fresh 
as paint, in spite of dancing all night . . . 
that’s where the girl of twenty scores so heav- 
ily over mere ‘finish’ ... I’m talking rot, 
aren’t I? . . . But let me look at that pretty 
face of yours while I can. I shan’t have the 
chance much longer. ’ ’ 

“The chance?” I wondered how he could 
have guessed. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean I’m going away ” 

He must have guessed. How? I stared. 

“Where to?” I gasped. 

He gave a curt little laugh. “Oh, hack, I 
suppose, to the husks and swine. No place for 
nice little girls with sapphire eyes! . . . 
You’ll wear those sapphires to match them, will 
you? always? Only, my dear, you’ll have to 
get them made up into a brooch, or wear them 
265 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

on another finger now — since yon won’t be 
wearing any engagement-ring of mine any 
more.” 

Again I wondered, all in a flurry, how lie 
knew I was going to break it off. 

I think he had been talking for a moment or 
so before I grasped that the breaking-off was 
being done by him! 

“When I asked yon to marry me, Morwenna, 
I had a right to do so — so far as my financial 
position went. By the time I had come into 
my own by taking it from yon — yon most inno- 
cent of little adventuresses ! — I was a rich man. 
Now there’s an end of that — I am ruined!” 

Still I stared at him, unable to see how that 
could possibly have come about. 

(I was an idiot about money — always !) 

As he went on talking rapidly, the truth 
gradually, though not very clearly, unfolded it- 
self to me. With his dead grandmother’s for- 
tune my fiance had been speculating wildly — 
investing it in this, that, and the other. What 
the companies were, or why they should sud- 
denly fall down like a house of cards, I hadn’t 
266 


“AKIN TO LOVE” 


enough business knowledge to realise. I only 
comprehended dimly, that most of his time, 
when he disappeared from the house here, 
where he came to visit his fiance so convention- 
ally, had been passed in the City, dabbling in 
schemes with men who had been too clever for 
him; so all his money was gone, just as irre- 
trievably as my own little income had six 
months ago in the City and Borderland. 

“But that’s not the worst,” he wound up 
desperately. “If it had been only my own 
money, it wouldn’t have been quite so black — 
after all, a man can get on — even a man who 
hasn’t been brought up to work. He can al- 
ways, as I told you, get a job at tending those 
pigs in the far country. If it had been only 
mine ” 

“But whose else’s is there?” I asked dazed. 

“Yours,” said Paul Wright heavily — “yours 
too.” 

I sat down, hardly knowing I had moved. 
He stood. He went on to explain to me that, 
thinking to make what he called a “big scoop,” 
he had taken the half of his grandmother’s for- 
267 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

tune which he was settling on me, but of which 
the interest only was being paid to me quar- 
terly. He had taken that and invested it in 
the same disastrous concerns, and the result 
was that, except for what I might have in hand 
of my quarter’s allowance — there was nothing 
left — nothing ! 

“All that remains — and thank goodness I 
fixed that up before I began this game,” said 
Paul Wright — “is this house. Now that land 
up here is so valuable, it should fetch a good 
deal by selling it, or, if you wished, it could 
always let well. Yes, you should manage to get 
a good tenant, Morwenna.” 

“I should manage?” I exclaimed. “What 
do you mean by saying I should manage?” 

“Well, my dear, it’s your house. That, at 
any rate, is saved out of the fire.” 

“It is not saved for me,” I said firmly. 
“Don’t you understand that I never mean to 
take it? It’s yours, and you will live in it.” 

And then it struck me as so funny that this 
house, over which I and that other Paul had 
argued and disputed, should again be the bone 
268 


“AKIN TO LOVE” 

of contention — this time between me and Paul 
Wright. 

“But I shall disappear,” he said, “leaving 
you in possession. Then what will you do?” 
He asked the question quite lightly, so that I 
was absolutely unprepared for what happened 
next. 

He had been standing up by the mantelpiece, 
I sitting in my favourite place, the big black 
satin pouffe on the white bearskin rug. As 
suddenly as thunder breaks, the flippant, dare- 
devil expression of his face broke up, and he 
cried out startlingly: 

“No — don’t tell me what you will do! It’s 
enough that I shall never see you again! For 
I have no one else, Morwenna, no one in the 
world! I shall be alone again — and, my God! 
how am I to face it?” 

And then, without a moment’s warning, he 
had flung himself down on his knees on the 
rug beside me — had thrown his arms round my 
waist, and buried his head in my lap. 

He was sobbing. 

I had never seen a man cry before, and I do 
269 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


hope to goodness I never shall again — never! 
It’s too awful — I don’t think I could stand it! 
To a woman one can say, “Yes, poor thing, go 
on, it will do you good!” and a child one can 
pick up and comfort. 

But one feels so utterly helpless with a man. 
To begin with, one knows that it must be some 
very unusual suffering that wrings from them 
that utterly unnatural confession of it. And 
then one also knows that those heavy sobs and 
those reluctant tears are not being a bit of com- 
fort to them, but the reverse. In fact, as 
Byron says about the difference between a 
man’s crying and a woman’s: “To us ’tis a re- 
lief; to them ’tis torture.” 

“Don ’t — don ’t ! ” I implored him. I took his 
hands. He clutched my fingers as if he were 
a drowning man grabbing at a life-buoy. 

“You mustn’t!” I said, incoherently. “It’s 
not — not so bad as all that ! Even if the money 
is all gone ” 

“It’s not the money I’m thinking of,” came 
brokenly from the lips of Paul Wright. He 
bit them to steady them. Then he said, simply 
270 


“AKIN TO LOVE” 


but startlingly, something I had never dreamed 
of hearing from him. “It’s you, Morwenna! 
Losing you!” 

Could I have heard aright ! I could scarcely 
believe it — I was almost tempted to pinch my- 
self to see if I were awake. 

And yet there was no mistake. There I sat 
on the black satin pouffe, staring, half-believing 
and entirely miserably, at the man with the 
desperate face, white-lipped and wild-eyed, on 
his knees before me. 

Desperate, because he was losing me after 
all ! It was the last thing I had ever expected 
of this man, with whom I had kept on easy, 
friendly terms for six months of what he him- 
self had specified as “an engagement of sorts”! 

“I don’t understand you!” I cried. “You 
can’t mean that you really care «for me?” 

“I am all broken up,” he said, “at the 
thought of losing you!” 

“But I thought you only liked me? I 
thought you were fond of me — just as one is 
fond of a child? You’ve often called me 
1 pretty child.’ ” 


271 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“Yes, that was how it began! It is differ- 
ent now. Remember, there have been six 
months of seeing you, going about with you, 
getting accustomed to the idea that there was 
some one in the world who belonged to me, and 
who would mean a home, and having to keep 
straight for her sake. I was so sick of every- 
thing else; here was something that stayed . 
And then, last night at the dance — I fancied 

you were different ” 

“I didn’t think,” I faltered, more miserable 
and confused than I had ever been before. “I 
never imagined this of you. ’ ’ 

I looked at him. The thought of what I had 
to do was growing clearer in my mind. 

He seemed to pull himself together, pushed 
his hands through his short, thick fair hair, got 
up from his knees, and stood looking down 
at me. 

“Well, never mind, then,” he said, in a 
strangely gentle tone. “I’m sorry I let you 
know about it. Don’t worry about it. There’s 
only one thing I ask you to do for me, and that 
is to let me provide for you as I suggested just 
272 


“AKIN TO LOVE” 


now. Say you will take that, Morwenna, as a 
last favour to me — and then it’s good-bye.” 

I had taken my resolution, I must act on it. 

“Good-bye? No, it isn’t!” I cried. 

My own voice sounded strange in my ears. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean that it shan’t be good-bye — you 
needn’t go away!” I cried impetuously. “In 
fact, I won’t have it!” 

For my mind now was full of one feeling — I 
should not now be able to do as I had intended 
and break off my engagement with Paul 
Wright, I couldn’t — couldn’t deal this blow to 
the man who had stood between me and ruin 
and exposure. 

Before I knew that he cared it had been dif- 
ferent. Gratitude alone would not have kept 
me to him. This was where pity came in — i 
and with us women I think pity is the strongest 
feeling in the world, next to love. 

Love was not for me, but the joy of giving 
could be mine. 

“I won’t give you up. Don’t go away,” I 
273 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


cried, holding out my hands. “If you want me, 
I will be yours !” 

“Ah, what? At last?” he cried, incredu- 
lously. 

And his whole face so lighted up; he came 
towards me and took me in his arms with a 
gesture of such immeasurable joy and relief 
that for the moment all I felt was the comfort 
that having sacrificed my own feelings could 
make this enormous difference in the happiness 
of a fellow creature. 

That was a kind of drug to me ; it helped to 
deaden the pain which must come later, the bit- 
terness of being engaged — still and irrevocably 
engaged — to the wrong man ! 


274 


CHAPTER XXIV 


LOVE AT LAST 

P AUL?” 

“Yes, little Morwenna!” 

“Do you want to catch the 6.45 train 
hack to Baker Street, or will you stay to a milky 
sort of supper here?” 

Paul Wright, lying at my feet among the 
daisies of the grass-plot in front of the farm, 
smiled up at me. 

“The milky supper, please, my dear. I’ll 
make it the last train up. It’s so peaceful 
here.” 

“Very well,” I said. “I will tell Mrs. Clare 
I shall want some more eggs.” 

I got up from my deck-chair and went 
through the wonderful entrance of the farm 
where I had taken rooms; a pure Gothic arch 
crowned by a carved coat-of-arms half-smoth- 
ered in ivy. A flight of shallow, worn stone 
275 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


steps led down to the grass-plot with the sun- 
dial and the border of old-fashioned flowers. 

That garden and that entrance to what had 
once been a great house gave the place the air 
of a convent and made me, Paul Wright’s 
fiancee, feel like a young nun who had renounced 
all worldly joys for a vocation. 

My vocation, I felt, was to make Paul Wright 
as good a wife as possible. 

We were to be married in a month’s time — 
in May. 

I had ceased to dread it. I hoped that after 
all it was going to work. He, my fiance, 
seemed so contented, though quieter, older, 
careworn. He worked as a clerk in the City 
now — he! who had never done anything in his 
life but follow his own devices. The Hamp- 
stead house was let. He came every Sunday 
to spend the day with me. After we were mar- 
ried we intended to settle down in a country 
cottage near the farm, whence he could go up 
to the City every day, and where I could have 
a little garden of my own. 

The whole plan of our lives would be, as he 
276 


LOVE AT LAST 

said, “so peaceful”; the days as quiet and un- 
disturbed and long as the evening shadows 
which would fall at last. . . . 

I hoped he would be perfectly happy. . . . 
He was very fond of me, though there had been 
no repetition of that passionate appeal of his 
when I had promised him, “I will be 
yours ” 

He has told me, since, what he thought of 
me during that last phase of our engagement. 
He had given up, it seemed, all idea of teaching 
me to love him : thinking I was one of the many 
girls who do not ever, cannot love. He put me 
down “as that most unmeltable type of iceberg, 
the iceberg who is just ‘ aff ectionate. ’ ” 

(I suppose he knows better now. . . .) 

“Mrs. Clare,” I said, coming into my land- 
lady’s homely kitchen, “Mr. Wright will stay 
to supper with me to-night, please.” 

“That’s right!” said Mrs. Clare heartily. 
“Do him a lot more good staying another hour 
or so in the fresh air than getting back to that 
stuffy town of his ! You’ll excuse me bringing 
in the things myself, Miss Beaugard. My little 
277 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


Annie will put out the things for you, and you 
can boil the fresh eggs on your little spirit- 
lamp, like you did that time with your newly- 
married lady-friend. ’ 9 (This was Ella.) 

4 ‘Certainly, Mrs. Clare. Are you going 
out?” 

“No, miss, but IVe got a gentleman expected 
who’s walked half through Buckinghamshire 
this afternoon, and IVe got to see to his room 
at once — IVe only just heard.” 

I had forgotten to get fresh flowers for my 
sitting-room table, so I went out through the 
back-door into the kitchen garden to get a bunch 
of wine-dark fragrant wallflowers. I got them ; 
I strolled idly down past the garden, on to the 
field path; I was revelling in the scented cool 
of the evening. It was growing rapidly dusk, 
for those were the days, remember, before we 
had adopted “Summer-time.” I turned aside 
to follow the flight of a big white moth flutter- 
ing above the hedge. Then I heard some one 
coming up behind me. I half turned to the 
tall, broad-shouldered figure that I had ex- 
pected. It had stopped. 

278 


LOVE AT LAST 

“Paul ” I said. 

And taking a step back, without looking at 
him, I leant my head back against his shoulder 
in a way that he had said was “such a friendly 
little way.” It always pleased him. 

But now he didn’t move. He did not speak. 
I turned my head up, quickly, to look into his 
face. . . . 

What, what was this? 

What had happened? 

Once before I had taken one of the two cous- 
ins for the other. 

This time I had thought I was speaking to 
Paul Wright, and behold 

I heard myself cry out, loudly and wildly, 
before I knew what I was going to say, “Oh! 
Oh! It’s the other Paul ... it’s Paul Lancas- 
ter. It is my Paul ! ’ ’ 

And before I knew what he would do he had 
caught me to him, had clasped my outstretched 
arms about his own neck, had called me by 
name; and then bent his fair head and kissed 
me as I had never (thank Heaven!) been kissed 
before. 


279 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

It was a supreme and whirling moment, mad, 
delicious, outrageous, with no excuse for it ex- 
cept that it was our moment. 

We, who had never spoken a word of love to 
each other, met suddenly like this and found 
it perfectly natural that we loved! It was all 
so utterly unprepared — and yet not so. I had 
been loving him, calling him to me in my mind 
for all those months, and I knew now, I knew 
that all those months he had been silently call- 
ing me to him. 

I forgot everything except that I was stand- 
ing with the man I loved, in kindliest shadow, 
with the soft night falling around us and only 
the bright eyes of the stars upon us, and far 
across the fields the red light of the farm. I 
only knew that he still held my hands clasped 
against his shoulders and that I leant against 
him, wishing that I might stay so for ever. It 
was happiness at last. It was waking up out 
of a bad dream. 

At last I heard his dear voice, muttering in- 
coherently, “Look here! I always say the 
280 


LOVE AT LAST 

wrong thing, darling. And this knocks me out 
so that I don’t know what to say ” 

“ Don’t say anything. I will. I’ve always 
loved you most frightfully,” I heard myself 
telling him, perfectly shamelessly. “ Always; 
haven’t you?” 

* ‘ What? Ra-ther! Why, that very first 
evening at the dinner-party ” 

“Say it again!” I entreated him, “so that I 
shan’t have begun before you!” 

“And all those weeks on the blessed En- 
cyclopaedia!” 

“When I thought you hated me! You were 
as cold as the North Pole to me, and I — I 
couldn’t talk Polish! You ought to have 
known ! ’ ’ 

“I got jolly little encouragement!” Then 
he said, “But liiten! I mean, tell me about 
yourself. I thought you were in my grand- 
mother’s house with the Rodneys? How do 
you come to spring up here? I never knew you 
knew the farm? I used to stay here as a boy 
— such jolly times ! And I came back to it be- 
cause those times were before I’d seen any- 
281 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
thing of you,” Paul Lancaster explained: “be- 
cause nothing here, at least, would remind me 
of the girl I was eating my heart out for 99 

“And you say you always say the wrong 
thing ! ” I laughed fondly. 

“I came here for a tramp after I fin- 
ished a job of work in this country. I thought 
I’d have such lots of things to remember, here, 
that they’d shut out the thought of the little 

face that No ! don’t hide it ! And the first 

thing I bump into coming across the meadow 
is the girl herself. I thought you were a ghost, 
Wenna! What brought you here?” 

“Oh, never mind those bothering practical 
things for a minute! Just a minute! What 
was it you called me — Wenna?” 

“Wenna. It was the little name I always 
gave you in my dreams, dear. Don’t you like 
it?” 

“Oh! And no one has ever called me it be- 
fore ” 

“Thank goodness!” said Paul Lancaster fer- 
vently. “That’s all mine!” 

282 


LOVE AT LAST 


“ Everything is all yours! Why — why 
couldn’t you have said — asked — before?” 

“I meant to, the very instant that Frith 
Chambers business came to an end !” 

“And then you went away without a word. 
Oh, Paul, why?” 

‘ ‘ Why ? Don ’t you remember ? ’ 9 

That brought me up standing. 

Remember? — I had forgotten everything. 
Forgotten the other Paul, our engagement, our 
marriage — to be in a month 

I gasped. 

“Paul,” I said falteringly, “there is such 
miles to explain to you about that. I don’t 
know how I shall ever do it ” 

“There’s heaps of time before us now,” said 
my Paul, happily. 

And now I think of it, how many weeks was 
it before he confessed to having got “the hang” 
of the whole abjectly silly story that came out 
bit by bit — the Rodneys, the card-case, the flow- 
ers, the private means, “Mac,” and the rest of 
it? He does know now. But then, at that mo- 
283 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


ment, lie wanted only to know whether I had 
ever liked his cousin as well as him. 

The tone of my “Never! Never!” must have 
convinced any one. 

“But he cared all right! ” 

“N-not at once, Paul! ,, 

“But later! Oh, of course later ” 

Oh, what wouldn’t I have given to be able to 
deny that! But a picture rose before me of 
Paul Wright’s face on the day when he came 
to tell me that he had lost all the money, and 
must break his engagement. 

Again I heard his broken voice — “It’s you, 
Morwenna — losing you ! ’ ’ 

“I am afraid,” I admitted almost in a whis- 
per, “that he did care later.” 

Paul Lancaster dug his heel into the 
meadow-grass below the tree, for a moment he 
said nothing. Then he cleared his throat. 

“Well, I don’t blame him. . . . When did you 
break off the engagement!” 

I felt myself turn cold all over. 

Of course, being an honourable man, this 
Paul I loved must imagine that all that other 
284 


LOVE AT LAST 

affair was “off” before I had allowed him to 
take me in his arms, speak as he had spoken. 

“Paul, stop; I haven’t told you everything!” 
I said hoarsely. “Oh, Paul, I am engaged to 
him still ! ’ ’ 

Oh, if I could only take the sickening regret 
that filled my own heart at the moment, and 
insert a little of it, just a little, as a sample of 
what may be before her, into the heart of any 
girl who contemplates becoming engaged — to 
the wrong man ! 

How right Miss Grizel was! Better a life- 
time of loneliness than that companionship. As 
once before, I looked back on the ghastly strain 
that it had been. It was as if to carve an ex- 
quisite piece of sculpture one had taken a 
plumber’s tools; or as if to lay the foundations 
of a house one had tried to employ the finest 
instruments of a cameo-maker. 

That sounds ridiculous, but it’s no more anom- 
alous than to try and make gratitude, affection, 
pity, do the work that can only be done by love. 

Paul Lancaster, who had dropped my hands, 
snatched them up again. 

285 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“ 1 Engaged ’ Wenna? Only to me. It’s me 
you love. ’ ’ 

“ Yes , yes! But I promised to marry him! ,, 

“I know,” between set teeth. “ Still, you 
can’t dream, of course — you’ll have to tell him 
that you’re breaking that promise.” 

“But — but I’m not!” I gasped. “Don’t you 
see he needs me? More than you. I’m all he 
has. He says so. I shall have to go back to 
him now ” 

“Yes, and tell him you’re dreadfully sorry, 
but it’s off.” 

There was a pause. Wonder filled me. 
“Could it be right, and yet so very much what 
I wanted to do?” 

“It’s a rotten job for you, darling,” said 
Paul, but relentlessly. ‘ ‘ Shall I come with you, 
or would it be better for him, poor chap, if you 
told him alone. ’ ’ 

“Alone, I think,” I faltered. 

Slowly I drew away from the protecting com- 
fort of Paul Lancaster’s arms. Truly I was to 
pay for the happiness I found there. Slowly, 
reluctantly, I turned towards the farm. 

286 


LOVE AT LAST 


Then I cried out suddenly: 

4 4 Oh, Paul ! Paul, look ! ’ ’ 

My lover echoed my startled exclamation. 

4 4 Look ! The place is on fire ! 1 ’ 

For the farm, which we had last glanced at 
as a dark bulk under the trees, lighted up only 
by that danger-signal of a red lamp in the par- 
lour-window, was now vividly illuminated as by 
flash after flash of summer lightning. 

A rolling cloud of white smoke, starred with 
sparks, curled above the old-fashioned chim- 
neys; flames shot up, a confused hubbub of 
shouting, screaming, and calling reached us 
from the yard. 

Fire ! 

Black figures were running to and fro against 
the livid facade of that wonderful old build- 
ing. One taller than the rest had flung him- 
self forward, pointing. 

4 4 Come on,” called my lover, and took me by 
the arm to hurry me on. Breathless, we ar- 
rived at the scene of confusion, the dreadful 
bonfire that had marked our betrothal evening. 


287 


CHAPTER XXV 


A CKY FROM THE HEART 

N O one knows — no one ever does seem to 
know on these occasions — how the fire 
was started at Mr. Clare’s farm. 

A dropped match on the woodwork, a spark 
from a horse’s hoof into the straw of the barn, 
and outhouses seemed to blaze like tinder; 
while every one within call worked like a gal- 
ley-slave, fetching and handing along and fling- 
ing on to the fire the buckets of water that did 
at last extinguish the eager flames that had, 
after all, done less damage than was feared. 
The farm was saved. 

No one belonging to the farm had been hurt, 
except that the Clares’ little girl burnt her fin- 
gers trying to snatch out of the still smoking 
outhouse a rag-doll, whose body had not ceased 
smouldering. 

But in a small panelled room in the west wing, 
288 


A CRY FROM THE HEART 


which is untouched by the fire, Paul Wright 
lay dangerously ill. 

It was a half -charred beam that had crashed 
down on his head, felling and stunning him 
into unconsciousness from which he’s only 
roused to rave, delirious and fevered. 

He knew no one — no, not when I went up and 
took his hot hand, feeling more wretchedly self- 
repoachful than I can ever describe. 

The accident had nothing to do with me, and 
yet I could not rid myself of the feeling that 
it was my fault that he lay there, his blue eyes 
frighteningly bright, his face lean and flushed, 
his tongue rambling on of things I know noth- 
ing of — sometimes in French, in other tongues. 

The doctor, who had wired for a nurse, said 
it was “ grave.” 

It was agony to me. If he didn’t recover, I 
should always be haunted by the knowledge 
that I had deceived him. If he did recover, I 
should have to confess to him that deceit, how 
for months I was engaged to one man — loving 
another. 

Paul Lancaster had taken a room at a cot- 
289 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


tage a mile away. I had arranged to stay with 
Paul Wright until the nurse came — but of what 
use had I been, all through that night of fever? 
Mrs. Clare relieved me at dawn. I slept — 
when one is twenty-two one will sleep after al- 
most anything. 

As soon as I was dressed again that good 
woman came to me. 

“Miss Beaugard! Miss, dear, hell know 
you now, I reckon/ ’ she said. “He’s calling 
for you.” 

“I’ll come,” said I, hastening to the room 
that was left untouched by the fire at the hack, 
and into which they had moved the injured man. 

“Dearest!” called the voice of Paul Wright 
wearily, appealingly. “Where are you, dear- 
est?” 

It was like a knife into my heart to hear 
him call so, and by that name, for the girl who 
felt herself belong, in every fibre, to another 
man. Mingled with my sorrow for the man 
lying there so helplessly, there was a queer, 
illogical stab of anger on the other Paul’s ac- 
count. 


290 


A CRY FROM THE HEART 


“I wanted to speak to her,” went on that 
feverish voice, 1 1 and she ’s gone ! ’ ’ 

“No; I am here, Paul,” I said gently. I 
slipped into the darkened room and up to the 
bed. I took his hot hand. Often the touch of 
mine has seemed to soothe him. 

This time he surprised me by turning away 
with a quick, pettish movement. 

“Who are you? I don’t know you.” 

“Paul, you asked for me,” I said unhappily.. 
“It is Morwenna!” 

“Morwenna? A pretty name. All girls’ 
names are pretty that end in ‘a’ — Laura, Erica, 
Margarita,” Paul Wright babbled on inconse- 
quently, his blue eyes, unnaturally bright, rov- 
ing about the room. 1 1 There was a Danish girl 
once called Asta. (Jolly nice little girl 
too. . . .) It gives a name a much more femi- 
nine sort of sound, that final ‘a.’ Sybil hasn’t 
got it. Yet she’s feminine enough, Heaven 
knows! Sybil! I wanted to tell her some- 
thing.” 

What was this? I drew my hand away, but 
291 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 
he didn’t seem to notice. He was gabbling on 
to himself. 

“If I ever see her, I shall tell her. It was 
on her account that I went away, you know. It 
was because of her that I let everybody think 
I’d been done for in that accident. Let her 
think so. Then she’d forget me. I wasn’t 
worth what she was beginning to think of me. 
No man’s worth it, least of all me; Sybil dear- 
est!” 

I stared down at him wonderingly. Where 
was it his delirious fancy was ranging ! About 
something that had nothing to do with me or 
his engagement to me. 

“I thought she was here a minute ago,” he 
insisted. “I felt her somewhere about. The 
sort of girl you’d know was near, even in the 
pitch-dark, or with your eyes shut. The only 
one I’ve ever met like that. She was near. 
Sybil!” 

“Paul! Paul!” 

It was not my voice that called his name. I 
was standing there, silent, bewildered, not 
knowing what I ought to do or say, when there 
292 


A CRY FROM THE HEART 


were light, hurried steps on the staircase out- 
side the half-open door. 

The door was flung open. The woman’s 
voice that had cried “Paul!” exclaimed: 
“Where is he? Let me pass; I must come to 
him!” And half involuntarily I found myself 
moving quickly aside to make way for the im- 
petuous entrance of a slim, trim figure dressed 
in deep black. 

She flung herself on her knees beside the 
bed, threw out her ungloved hands to the sick 
man. 

‘ 4 1 had to come ! ” I heard her gasp, in a voice 
that was bafflingly familiar to me. “I’ve come. 
You see ” 

Paul Wright sat up suddenly against his pil- 
lows. And I heard him call out, as loudly and 
clearly as if he were in the full pride of his 
strength : 

“Sybil! I knew!” 

And I knew her too; Nurse Egerton! 

The name — the black dress she wore — the 
passionate tenderness with which she took Paul 
Wright’s fever-wasted hands and buried her 
293 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

face against them — these things filled in some 
of the blanks in that story a sick man’s mut- 
terings had betrayed. 

But this was no time for telling of stories — • 
no time for the asking of a single question. 

These two loved one another. They were to- 
gether after long and bitter separation; and 
this was their hour. 

I left them to it. 


294 


CHAPTER XXVI 


a woman’s duel 

I WAITED, sitting on those shallow steps 
of the farm that had seemed like a con- 
vent. 

I hbped that Paul, my own Paul, might come 
up from the cottage, but there was no sign of 
him. Never mind. I could afford to wait; 
thinking, thinking. I went over in my mind that 
old, never-solved question of Attraction be- 
tween a man and a maid, and what it is that 
makes attractiveness . . . and how it is that for 
one girl a man may be a Prince Charming, to 
another, the same man is a bore. ‘ 4 Attrac- 
tive!” Of a woman, too, there is no saying 
which she may be considered. To some she is, 
to some she isn’t. 

That girl upstairs would drag Paul Wright 
back from Death’s door to talk to her, I was 
sure. I was equally sure that my Paul would 
295 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


see nothing in her but an efficient smart-look- 
ing little woman. So it is all the world over, 
with all the men and all the girls one meets ! 

Then, as I was wondering what sort of an 
interview I must presently have with the girl 
who had ousted me (thank Heaven!) from my 
ex-fiance’s sick-room, I hear her light step be- 
hind me, her curt, polite 4 ‘Miss Beaugard, may 
I speak to you now?” 

I jumped up. “Oh, do,” I said. I showed 
the slim, black-clad visitor into my “parlour,” 
where Mrs. Clare had laid cold lunch for two. 
“Come in here; and do sit down, Nurse Eger- 
ton.” 

“Thank you, but I’d rather stand,” said the 
girl whom Paul Wright called “Sybil.” Her 
face was flushed, and there was still some of 
the wonderful light in her eyes ; but it faded as 
she looked at me into something colder, more 
defiant. Coldness, defiance, and that half- 
timid curtness were mingled in her voice as she 
made the announcement: “I ought to tell you, 
first of all, that I have come here to nurse Mr. 
Paul Wright until he is well. And then” — a 
296 


A WOMAN’S DUEL 


sort of defiance rang out in her tone — “then 
we are going to be married.” 

‘ ‘ Of course ! ’ ’ I said. I should have smiled, 
but her manner froze me. “Yes! I gathered 
that, Nurse” — here I put in with a desperate 
effort to break the ice — ‘ 6 Nurse Sybil ! ’ ’ 

“My name is Mrs. Egerton,” the girl in 
black corrected me. “My husband died ten 

days ago. I dare say I shall shock you ” 

Flushing at the sneer, I shook my head in 
protest; but she went on, looking out of the 
window at the sprays of japonica, the garden, 
the field beyond, the stream meandering 
through it — not, not at me! She said stiffly: 

“I owe you some explanation, I suppose. He 
; — my husband — was thirty years older than I 
was. He was my patient in the nursing home 
where I went after I left the hospital where I 
trained. He became absurdly fond of me, of- 
fered to marry me, and I refused him, of course. 
Later on, he was supposed to be dying, and he 
gave nobody any peace until I promised to go 
through a form of marriage with him on his 
deathbed. He insisted that he wanted to leave 
297 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


me his name and what money he had when 
he died. I gave in,” said the young nurse, with 
a little short, wearied sigh. “I thought it 
brutal to refuse a poor old wretch who had 
only a few hours to live. He lived five years 
after that.” 

“But you weren’t with him?” 

“No. He was in a lunatic asylum,” said the 
young nurse dryly. “I went on with my pro- 
fession, keeping (since I’d promised) his name. 
For two years I was nursing Mrs. Wright. 
Then ” She flushed again. 

“You mean,” I said as gently and sympa- 
thetically as I could, ‘ ‘ that it was then you met, 
and grew to care for, her grandson. Isn’t that 
it ? I can understand. ’ ’ 

“You think so?” 

Her cold eyes were fixed upon a Morwenna 
Beaugard whom they saw, I knew, as a demure 
and mercenary and loveless Minx. (Yes! 
That is how a woman-rival can sum up the girl 
whom some man knows only as his infatuated 
and self-less slave.) Then she broke out: 

“He understood. He saw that for a word 

298 


A WOMAN’S DUEL 


— a look, I’d follow him to the ends of the 
earth, whatever name I bore! Be shocked if 
you like, but that was how I cared. And how 
he cared was — that he went way. Knowing in 
his heart that there could never be an end made 
of all this while I thought he was alive, he let 
me think him dead. You know that part of 
the story, Miss Beaugard. That was where you 
came into it.” 

“Yes, I must explain to you ” 

“No; you must let me finish ” 

i ‘ Tell me one thing first, ’ ’ I said. ‘ ‘ How was 
it that, since he seemed to be dead for your 
sake, he came alive again when his grandmother 
died?” 

“I knew you’d think it was for the money,” 
the other woman said scornfully. “Well, it 
wasn’t. It was because of a rumour that had 
gone about concerning me — that my husband 
had died, and that I was remarried. He came 
back to see — Oh, I don’t know! He’s human 
— very human, after all! He may have hoped 
it was not true. I let the story stand. 
Through people we both knew, I allowed him 
299 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

to think it true that I had fallen in love with 
another man.” 

“Why?” I asked wonderingly. 

There was hate in her voice as she retorted : 

“Why? Because of you. He had told his 
grandmother that there was one girl. . « . Mr. 
Lancaster told us that this one girl he cared 
for more than any other was working at Frith 
Chambers. ’ ’ 

I drew a long breath, leaning against the lat- 
tice. 

“Now,” I said. “This is something I have 
to explain, if he hasn’t done so.” 

“I never asked him,” retorted Nurse Eger- 
ton. 

“Then I ’ll tell.” 

I did. For the third time in my life, I went 
all over it again, that absurd story of mine 
that had led to all this tangle; the girls in the 
office, the flowers, the card-case — all of it. 
Breathlessly, incoherently, bit by bit, it came 
out. . . . 

I’d thought I’d paid, long ago and over and 
over, for that unspeakably silly piece of deceit. 

300 


A WOMAN'S DUEL 

But I hadn't felt entirely punished for it until 
I heard Sybil Egerton laugh. 

For she didn't believe it! 

She didn't believe in the motive! 

“It sounds very spontaneous and young, 
Miss Beaugard, ' ' she scoffed. i ‘ But would you 
have done it if, say, the name of Paul Wright 
had belonged to a man as poor as Paul is now!" 

‘ ‘ Of course ! I didn 't know him from Adam ! 
How should I know if he were rich or poor?" 

“Oh! How do people know these things? 
You must forgive me." 

“It's you who don't forgive me," I said, look- 
ing steadily at her. 

She looked steadily back. 

“Do you expect it?" she asked. “You were 
for six months engaged to Paul Wright." 

“Yes. But you see how that came about. 
You see the sort of engagement it was," I 
pleaded. “Oh, don't pretend you don't know 
the difference ! He loved you — I see it now — 
all the time!" 

“Was there never a time," said Sybil Eger- 
301 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

ton accusingly, “when he said, and believed, 
that he had come to love you?” 

I was silent. I remembered that afternoon 
at the old house, when I’d prepared to break 
off the engagement to be stopped by that yoang 
man’s appeal of “You, Morwenna! Losing 
you. It breaks me up ! ” 

And, before I had time to form a fib that I 
knew would be useless, she continued : 

“Do you suppose I don’t know how often a 
man is in love with more than one at a time? 
I am ‘a man’s woman,’ you know. Women 
don’t like me; I hate them! Men confide in 
me. And I’ve heard and seen so often that 
the right woman, if she doesn’t happen to be 
available, is no safeguard against” — she looked 
at me at last — ‘ 1 the girl who ’s there. ’ ’ 

“What can I say?” I said, feeling helpless. 
“You ’ve always hated me. If I tell you I never 

cared for him, you will be angry still ” 

“Well, I should think so!” 

“And if I had cared it would make it no bet- 
ter.” 

“Not a bit.” 

302 


A WOMANS DUEL 


“And what if I tell you Pm going to marry 
somebody else?” 

“What difference would that make? Mar- 
ried or single, you’ll never know what it is to 
love. If you did, Miss Beaugard, you’d know 
what I meant. Why, if he’d given you noth- 
ing but one admiring look as he passed, I should 
still be jealous of you.” 

“Then there must be a lot of girls you may 
be much more jealous of,” I retorted, in my 
haste, remembering that fevered muttering 
about “There was a Banish girl once , called 
Asta How Nurse Egerton must hate — or 
would have hated her! 

But, to my utter astonishment, she said, 
much less seriously: “Oh, girls he made love to 
before he met me — I don’t mind them.” 

(Strange!) 

“Ah, then ,” I pleaded more hopefully, 

“why ‘mind’ me? Look!” I pointed out of 
the window. “Look at that cloud reflected in 
the stream, a white cloud. Last night there 
was a pink cloud reflected there. It’s passed 
and left no trace. This one will pass. That’s 
303 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


about as much as the thought of me was in the 
heart of Paul Wright/ ’ I argued. “And now 
look at that golden water-lily beside it. It 
grows, it sways there day and night, rooted 
in the heart of the stream. That is like you,.” 

She was silent. 

“Do believe me,” I urged. “Try — not even 
to be friends, but to stop being enemies before 
we say Good-bye! Couldn’t you shake hands 
with me now?” 

There was a pause. Then she said doubt- 
fully. “You sound sincere. But can a woman 
be sincere? It isn’t feminine.” 

“Then I am not feminine,” I pleaded. “I 
am not what Paul Wright said this morning 
about you.” 

“What was that?” she said sharply, and 
raised her chestnut head. Her eyes widened 
as if she must read from my face every word 
I had ever heard from him about her. 

And conscientiously I repeated his words. 
“ ‘Sybil is feminine enough, Heaven knows . 
She has the attraction of a score of women.. 
The sort of girl one would know was near, even 
304 


A WOMAN’S DUEL 


in the dark and with one's eyes shut . The only 
one I've ever met who was like that!' That’s 
what he said when he was ‘wandering’ and 
calling aloud for you.” 

“Did he?” Her voice was changed. 
“Fancy your telling me. ... I thought girls 
only repeated the horrid things they’d heard 
about other girls. It was good of you, Miss 
Beaugard.” 

Then swiftly, unexpectedly she made a 
movement towards me, put one slim black-clad 
arm around me, and dropped a shy, impulsive 
kiss of friendliness upon my cheek. 

“Oh, it was generous of you!” she ex- 
claimed, brokenly. “Nothing on earth could 
have pleased me so much to hear, and yet you 
didn ’t keep it to yourself ! Y ou gave me that ! ’ ’ 

Thank goodness that at last I had hit upon 
something that she didn’t refuse! 


305 


CHAPTER XXVII 


SAILING ORDERS 

T HAT evening I threw a wrap on over my 
dress and wandered out down the fields 
towards the station lane between tall- 
growing hedges. 

I had seen Sybil Egerton changed from the 
elegantly-dressed young widow into the trim 
mauve-and-white nurse of old Mrs. Wright’s 
time, and she had disappeared, with a smile 
that she had never given me in those days ! into 
her patient’s room. Thank goodness she had 
been calling at that Hostel when the news came 
through that a nurse was required for Paul 
Wright ! It had made everything straight. 

And I had written to the friend who would 
have wished it so, to Miss Grizel, who lived 
with Ella and her husband. I had written to 
my own people. 


306 


SAILING ORDERS 


I was feeling tired, dazed, but content with 
my day’s doings. 

There needed one thing only to make that 
content complete. . . . 

Against the dark trunk of a tree there 
glowed the red spark of a cigarette. It moved, 
then described a circle into the hedge. I heard 
a laugh, a soft call of my name : 

1 6 Morwenna ! Wenna ! ’ ’ 

“Ah, Paul!” I cried gladly. “I wondered 
where you had been all day!” 

“In town, dear. Just nipped down again be- 
tween trains,” said my lover as he strode for- 
ward out of the shadows to take me in his arms. 
“You looked like a little bat flitting alone — 
or ought I to say a little white moth? Blind 
as a bat. I always say the wrong thing. . . . 
But look here. Tell me.” His voice grew se- 
rious as he put me down. “Has anything hap- 
pened about — that poor fellow?” 

“Yes. He’s going to get well.” 

“I mean, about his . . . engagement?” 

“Yes!” 

“Ah! You’ve told him?” 

307 


THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 


“No!” I said, laughing to myself in the 
gloom. 

“What do you mean, Wenna? Doesn’t he 
— isn’t he well enough to hear?” 

“Oh, he’s well enough not to care who I’m 
engaged to, or who ’s engaged to me, as long as 
he isn’t!” I laughed. “Oh, Paul, I’m let off 
more easily than I deserved! He’s engaged 
himself, without a word from me, to some one 
else, some one he likes much better.” 

“Must be entirely off his head,” said Paul 
Lancaster, with conviction. “What’s the 
meaning of it? But never mind; tell me pres- 
ently. Three-quarters of an hour is all I’ve got 
to settle things in.” 

I looked up, wondering at the change of tone. 

“I’ve got to get back,” he explained. “I 
arranged the dickens of a lot of business to- 
day. I don’t know if I’ve done the wrong 
thing again, but the job seems sound enough to 
take ” 

“What ‘job’?” 

“This new one of mine,” he explained, “in 
Cape Town. You’ve got two more days to 
308 


SAILING ORDERS 


pack up and leave this place, Wenna,” he in- 
formed me. ‘ 1 In three days from now we shall 
be married ” 

“Married !” I gasped. 

“Must. We’re off in four; I’ve got our pas- 
sages booked ” 

I gasped again. “Our passages?” 

“Dashed if I’m going out alone,” declared 
my lover. “Don’t you want to come, Wenna?” 

I just laughed, nestling my head into the 
curve of Paul Lancaster’s great hard boyish 
arm. After this tangle of talk and misunder- 
standing and misery I was only too happy to 
give silent consent to anything he planned for 
me — for Us! 

What was there to say? What has any girl 
to say, when after false starts and blundering, 
the really right Mr. Bight comes along? 


THE END 


I 


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